THE    ATHENy€UM    PRESS    SERIES 

G.  L.  KITTREDGE  and  C.  T.  WINCHESTER 

GENERAL   EDITORS 


XLbc 

Htbeu^um  press  Series* 

This  series  is  intended  to  furnish  a 
library  of  the  best  English  Uterature 
from  Chaucer  to  the  present  time  in  a 
form  adapted  to  the  needs  of  both  the 
student  and  the  general  reader.  The 
works  selected  are  carefully  edited,  with 
biographical  and  critical  introductions, 
full  explanatory  notes,  and  other  neces- 
sary apparatus. 


Htbena:um  press  Series 


CARLYLE 


Sartor  Resartus 


EDITED    BY 


ARCHIBALD    MacMECHAN 

George  Mimro  Professor  of  English  Language  and  Literature  in 
Dalhousie  College 


Boston,  U.S.A.,  and  London 
GINN    ^    COMPANY,    PUBLISHERS 

1897 


Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall 


Copyright,  1896,  by 
GINN   &    COMPANY 


all  rights  reserved 


9^. 


Coi 


^^.^. 


(JU  ■  7 


TO 


CHARLES    ELIOT    NORTON 

AS   A    MARK   OF   ADMIRATION 

FOR    HIS    CHARACTER   AS   A   MAN    OF   LETTERS 

AND 

HIS    DEFENSE    OF   CARLYLE'S    MEMORY 


M101304 


3Rem  3Sermac|tnt^,  wie  ^errlid^  weit  unb  brett ! 

2)ie  3eit  ift  mein  SSermad^tni^,  mein  2lc!er  ift  bie  3eit. 

©oetl^e. 


PREFACE. 


America's  part  in  Carlyle  is  not  small  When  he  was 
still,  in  his  own  country  and  among  his  own  people,  a 
prophet  without  honor  and  sometimes  almost  without  bread, 
he  received  from  New  England  the  three  things  he  needed 
most,  —  money,  literary  recognition,  and  a  friend.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  the  chance  visit  of  an  American 
proved  to  be  the  turning-point  in  Carlyle's  career.  To 
Emerson's  memorable  voyage  of  discovery  to  Craigenput- 
toch  in  1832,  the  beginnings  of  Carlyle's  worldly  prosperity 
and  of  his  influence  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  are  directly 
traceable.  But  for  Emerson's  generous  admiration  of  them, 
Carlyle's  earliest  works  would  certainly  not  have  been  pub- 
lished in  Boston  before  they  had  made  head  in  London ; 
and  but  for  the  unselfishness  and  business  talent  of  Con- 
cord's philosophical  dreamer,  the  proceeds  of  the  sales 
might  never  have  reached  the  rightful  owner  in  Cheyne  Row. 
Not  in  vain  did  he  "summon  all  the  Yankee"  in  him,  and 
"multiply  and  divide  like  a  lion."  But  money  and  fame 
were  as  dust  in  the  balance,  weighed  against  the  treasure 
of  a  true  friendship.  What  value  Carlyle  set  upon  it  is  to 
be  seen  in  almost  every  page  of  the  Emerson  correspond- 
ence. Again,  in  criticism  no  earlier  praise  is  so  just  or  so 
ample  as  Thoreau's.  Carlyle's  very  insult  to  the  Republic 
in   the  hour  of  its  extremity,  followed  as  it  was  at  once  by 


Viii  PREFACE. 

his  earnest  desire  for  reparation,  bound  him  closer  to  that 
new  world  he  never  saw.  When  the  time  came  for  him 
to  set  his  house  in  order,  he  left  to  an  American  university 
as  well  as  to  his  own  Edinburgh,  a  token  of  affectionate 
regard,  an  appropriate  peace-offering  of  his  books.  Since 
his  death,  an  American  man  of  letters  has  proved  the  truest 
friend  of  his  reputation  by  putting  in  the  way  of  every  one 
who  cares  to  make  the  trial,  those  personal  documents  which 
correct  the  inadvertent  errors,  and  downright  distortions  of 
Carlyle's  great  biographer  and  literary  executor.  It  was 
from  an  American  city,  sixty  years  ago,  that  the  first  edition 
of  Sartor  Resartus  issued  in  book  form;  and  it  is  not  unfit- 
ting that  from  the  same  city  should  now  come,  this,  the  first 
attempt  to  deal  systematically  with  the  difficulties  the  book 
presents. 

The  aim  of  the  present  edition  is  threefold:  to  make  a 
book  which  is  admitted  to  be  worthy  of  study,  and  has  the 
name  of  being  dark,  easier  of  comprehension  to  the  average 
undergraduate  and  general  reader ;  to  show  clearly  and  in 
detail  the  relations  between  this  spiritual  autobiography  and 
the  actual  life  of  Carlyle,  which  have  hitherto  been  either 
vaguely  stated  or  only  suspected  to  exist ;  and  to  demon- 
strate the  process  by  which  the  book  grew.  The  first  inten- 
tion includes  the  other  two,  and  is  the  most  important  of  all. 
The  study  of  the  writings  necessary  for  these  two  lesser 
purposes  has  brought  about  this  desirable  result,  —  the 
editor  has  been  kept  in  the  background,  and  the  great  man 
has  himself  furnished  the  commentary  to  his  own  text. 
Incidentally,  the  close  scrutiny  of  Sartor  has  brought  to 
light  a  number  of  curious  errors,  such  as  may  befall  even  a 
man  of  genius,  when  he  leans  too  hard  upon  the  best  of 


PREFACE.  ix 

memories,  and  writes  at  a  distance  from  his  works  of  refer- 
ence. These  have  been  noted  in  no  spirit  of  vainglory,  but 
with  the  natural  hesitation  of  the  novice  on  whom  it  is  laid 
to  change  places  for  the  moment  with  his  master. 

The  task  of  preparing  this  work,  though  thoroughly  con- 
genial, and  taken  up  lightheartedly  enough,  proved  heavier 
as  it  neared  completion.  Carlyle's  course  through  the  world 
of  books  is  as  incalculable  as  a  bee's  in  a  clover-field.  He  is 
besides  a  giant — in  seven-league  boots;  and  Hop  o'  my 
Thumb's  chances  of  keeping  him  in  sight  are  not  brilliant. 
Though  I  have  striven  to  avoid  the  usual  jeers  at  commenta- 
tors and  their  farthing  candles,  I  cannot  hope  that  all  readers 
will  find  "each  dark  passage  "  sufficiently  illuminated.  There 
are  still  a  few  holes  in  Sartor's  coat  which  remain  to  be 
neatly  darned,  and  some  regrettable  gaps  in  my  information. 
These  are  indicated  in  the  hope  that  more  learned  critics 
may  fill  them  up.  As  I  have  been  forced  to  work  without 
the  aid  of  a  modern,  adequate  library,  my  references  are 
not  always  made  to  the  best  or  most  accessible  editions; 
though  they  are,  I  trust,  clear  and  in  every  case  to  be  relied 
on.  To  break  a  road  through  new  country  is  rough  work, 
and  much  may  be  forgiven  the  pioneer,  if  the  way  he  opens 
up  is  found  to  be  merely  passable. 

That  the  imperfections  of  this  work  are  not  more  numer- 
ous than  they  are,  is  largely  due  to  the  kindness  of  many 
friends  who  supplied  information  or  transcribed  extracts,  or 
verified  references  which  were  inaccessible  to  me.  To  my 
colleagues  at  Dalhousie  my  thanks  are  first  due,  to  Profs.  C. 
Mac  Donald,  J.  Johnson,  J.  Liechti,  J.  G.  MacGregor,  W.  C. 
Murray,  and  H.  Murray,  also  to  Prof.  W.  M.  Tweedie  of 
Mt.    Allison    University,    the     Rev.    \Vm.    King    of    Christ 


X  PREFACE. 

Church,  Cambridge,  W.  C.  Desbrisay,  Esq.,  of  Ottawa, 
T.  Heath  Haviland,  Esq.,  of  Charlottetown,  P.  E.  I.,  and 
chiefly  to  Prof.  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  who  lent  me  his  pre- 
cious manuscript  copy  of  Carlyle's  Journals,  and  in  other 
ways  encouraged  this  present  work  ;  to  Prof.  G.  L.  Kittredge 
whose  editorial  zeal  enabled  him  to  endure  the  whole  corpus 
of  notes  at  one  memorable  sitting  ;  to  my  old  friend  Dr.  F. 
H.  Sykes  of  the  Western  University,  whose  affection  has 
survived  the  ordeal  of  reading  many  proof-sheets;  and  to 
one  other  friend  I  need  not  name,  who  aided  in  the  tedious 
task  of  collating  texts.  The  list  is  too  long  for  any  claim 
of  independence,  but  not  for  gratitude. 

The  Glass  House,  Dutch  Village, 
Halifax,  July  26,  1895. 


CONTENTS, 


INTRODUCTION  PAGE 

I.  The  Production  of  Sartor xiii 

II.  The  Sources xix 

III.  Relation  to  Carlyle's  Life xxiii 

IV.  The  Problem  of  Blumine xxvii 

V.  Structure xxxvi 

VI.  Style      .        .         .        .     * xlii 

VII.  Significance  and  Influence Ix 

SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

CHAPTER  BOOK      I. 

I.    Preliminary i 

II.  Editorial  Difficulties 6 

III.  Reminiscences ii 

IV.  Characteristics 23 

V.   The  World  in  Clothes 30 

VI.  Aprons 37 

VII.  Miscellaneous-Historical 40 

VIII.  The  World  out  of  Clothes 44 

IX.    Adamitism 51 

X.    Pure  Reason 56 

XI.    Prospective 62 

BOOK   II. 

I.   Genesis 72 

II.   Idyllic 80 


xii  COXTENTS. 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

III.  Pedagogy 90 

IV.  Getting  under  Way  .        .        .        .        .         .        .  107 

V.   Romance 120 

VI.  Sorrows  oe  Teueelsdrockh 134 

VII.  The  Everlasting  No 145 

VIII.  Centre  of  Indifference 154 

IX.  The  Everlasting  Yea  .        .        .         .        .        .        .  166 

X.  Pause 179 

BOOK    III. 

I.    Incident  in  Modern  History 188 

II.   Church-Clothes         .        .        _^ 194 

III.  Symbols '•  -,      •        •         -197 

IV.  Helotage 205 

V.   The  Phcenix 210 

VI.    Old  Clothes 216 

V^II.    Organic  Filaments 221 

VIII.    Natural  Supernaturalism 231 

IX.    Circumspective »..       .         .       243 

X.    The  Dandiacal  Body 247 

XI.   Tailors 261 

XII.   Farewell 265 

Notes 273 

Appendix,  Testimonies  of  Authors       ....  399 

Carlyle's  Index 405 

Index  to  Notes  and  Introduction       ....  413 


INTRODUCTION. 


I. 


In  the  year  1830,^  Carlyle  was  living  with  his  wife  in  the 
lonely  moorland  farm-house  of  Craigenputtoch,  which  is  by 
interpretation,  "  Hill  of  the  Hawks,"  on  the  western  border 
of  his  native  shire,  Dumfries.  He  was  no  longer  young, 
and  neither  a  successful  nor  a  happy  man.  The  eldest 
son  of  a  stone-mason,  he  had  followed  the  usual  career  of 
the  ambitious  Scots  peasant,  by  preparing  for  the  ministry. 
His  father  gave  him  the  best  education  in  his  power, 
paying  his  expenses  first  at  a  good  academy  near  home  and 
afterwards  at  the  university  of  Edinburgh.  Though  Carlyle 
acquiesced  in  the  choice  of  profession  made  for  him  by  his 
pa,rents  so  far  as  to  preach  two  formal  sermons  at  Divinity 
Hall,  he  found  at  the  close  of  his  university  career  that  he 
was  unfitted  for  the  pulpit,  and  chose  the  usual  alternative, 
the  schoolmaster's  desk.  He  disliked  the  profession  of 
teaching  and  soon  abandoned  it,  but  his  short  apprentice- 
ship to  the  distasteful  calling  gave  him  an  influential  and  life- 
long friend,  the  only  human  being  he  ever  saw  face  to  face, 

1  The  biographies  of  Carlyle  are  so  many  and  so  easy  to  obtain,  that 
I  have  not  thought  it  well  to  load  my  introduction  with  any  biographical 
facts  but  those  which  directly  explain  the  origin  of  Sartor.  After 
Froude's  classical  work,  the  best  is  Dr.  Garnett's  "  Life  "  in  the  Great 
Writers  Series  (Walter  Scott,  London).  This  contains  Anderson's 
invaluable  bibliography.  Prof.  Nichol's  memoir  (English  Men  of 
Letters  Series),  though  meritorious,  is  not  so  pleasant  in  tone,  nor  so 
admirably  compressed. 


xiv  INTRO  D  UC  TION. 

whose  superiority  to  himself  he  in  any  way  recognized.  This 
was  the  handsome,  genial,  brilliant  Edward  Irving.  Although 
they  had  met  before,  they  grew  intimate  only  when  fate 
threw  them  together  as  village  dominies  in  the  quaint  little 
town  of  Kirkcaldy.  Irving  was  at  this  time  Carlyle's  intel- 
lectual peer,  and  the  two  young  men  of  genius  read  and 
studied  together,  or  walked  and  talked  endlessly  along  the 
pleasant  sands  beside  the  sea.  Their  ways  soon  parted. 
Irving,  who  was  rising  rapidly  into  notice,  went  to  Glasgow 
to  be  assistant  to  Dr.  Chalmers.  His  translation  to  London 
in  1821,^  marked  an  epoch  in  the  life  of  his  obscure  friend, 
as  well  as  in  his  own.  Irving  became  the  fashionable 
preacher  of  the  metropolis  ;  and  it  was  at  his  instance  that 
Carlyle  first  visited  the  city  which  was  to  be  his  home  for 
half  his  life.  A  Mrs.  Buller,  who  had  been  attracted  to  the 
Caledonian  Chapel  by  Irving's  preaching,  asked  him  to 
recommend  a  tutor  for  her  sons.  Like  a  true  Scot,  he 
remembered  his  countryman ;  and  the  young  Bullers  had 
the  good  fortune  to  have  for  tutor  perhaps  the  most  remark- 
able man  of  his  age  in  Great  Britain.  This  was  the  second 
position  of  the  kind  Carlyle  had  undertaken  and  by  far  the 
more  agreeable.  The  English  boys  were  not  only  clever  but 
well-mannered  and  affectionate.  Charles,  the  elder,  was 
destined  to  assist  in  giving  England's  greatest  colony 
responsible  government  and  to  die  on  the  threshold  of  a 
wider  fame.  Tutor  and  pupil  became  friends  to  the  benefit 
of  both.  To  a  man  of  Carlyle's  simple  habits,  ;^2oo  a  year 
was  riches.  The  first  use  he  made  of  his  wealth  was  to 
pay  for  his  brother  John's  education  and  to  assist  the  rest 
of  the  family  in  every  possible  way.  Contact  with  the 
refinement  of  the  Bullers  and  their  friends  was  good  for 
the  raw  peasant  scholar  ;  but  for  several  reasons  he  resigned 
his  position  after  a  tenure  of  two  years. 

1  Rem.,  II,  99  and  n. 


INTR  on  UC  TION.  XV 

He  was  now  twenty-nine  years  of  age,  without  a  profes- 
sion, trade,  or  means  of  livelihood.  As  a  student,  he  had 
done  hack  articles  for  the  Brewster's  Edinburgh  Encyclo- 
pcedia,  and  now  he  turned  to  literature  in  the  hope  of  earn- 
ing his  bread.  In  the  years  of  his  tutorship  he  had  studied 
German  and  translated  Goethe's  Wilhebn  Meister.  A  copy 
sent  to  the  author  won  the  great  man's  regard.  The  work 
brought  him  in  ;^i8o  and  encouraged  him  to  proceed.  For 
two  years  he  supported  himself  by  his  translations  from  the 
German  and  his  articles  on  German  literature.  But  his 
youth  was  slipping  away.  He  was  known  only  to  a  small 
circle  as  an  eccentric  and  impracticable  man  of  genius, 
which  by  no  means  accorded  with  his  vast  ambition.  He 
suffered  constantly  from  a  painful  but  not  dangerous  disease. 
He  was  at  war  with  himself,  as  his  journals  testify.  At  this 
time  he  married. 

His  friendship  with  Irving  had  paved  the  way  for  another 
and  closer  relationship.  When  Irving  was  master  in 
Haddington  Academy,  he  became  deeply  interested  in  Jane 
Baillie  Welsh,  the  beautiful  and  clever  daughter  of  a  country 
surgeon  of  good  family  and  sterling  character.  He  was 
fresh  from  college  and  she  was  a  mere  child.  His  position 
as  her  tutor  in  her  father's  house  favored  the  growth  of  inti- 
macy, though  neither  of  them  seems  to  have  known  the  real 
state  of  their  feelings  for  each  other.  From  Haddington 
Irving  went  to  Kirkcaldy  and  there  drifted  into  an  engage- 
ment with  the  minister's  daughter.  Miss  Isabella  Martin. 
As  time  went  on,  he  found  that  he  had  mistaken  his  feelings 
towards  both  women.  To  his  betrothed  wife  he  was  indif- 
ferent ;  it  was  his  quondam  pupil  who  had  his  heart.  He 
tried  to  free  himself  from  his  entanglement;  but  the  Martins 
held  him  to  his  plighted  word,  and  Jane  Welsh,  though  she 
returned  his  love  passionately,  would  not  listen  to  him  as 
long  as  his  engagement  lasted.    The  affair  ended  in  Irving's 


xvi  INTRODUCrWN. 

loveless  marriage  with  the  woman  to  whom  he  was  bound  in 
honor,  to  the  ruin  of  his  own  happiness  and  that  of  the 
woman  he  loved.  At  first  Carlyle's  relation  to  the  three  was 
that  of  the  friend,  or  mere  bystander.  He  did  not  know  the 
real  state  of  the  case  till  shortly  before  his  marriage.  In 
182 1,  on  a  visit  to  Haddington  with  Irving,  Carlyle  met 
his  future  wife.  With  her  keen  insight,  she  soon  divined  his 
genius ;  but  she  was  repelled  by  his  rustic  manners,  and  the 
rough  strength  of  his  character.  Their  first  step  towards 
intimacy  was  a  literary  correspondence  which  seems  to  have 
been  carried  on  without  any  great  break  from  their  first 
meeting  till  their  marriage.  Miss  Welsh  was  ambitious,  and 
with  Carlyle  she  had  far  more  in  common  than  with  Irving. 
The  story  of  their  courtship  has  never  been  given  to  the 
world;  but  Mr.  Froude  has  told  us  that  there  were  rubs  in 
its  course.  One  episode  was  the  interference  of  a  friend, 
and  another  a  lover's  quarrel  which  almost  ended  iuva  final 
estrangement.  The  "taming  of  the  mocking-bird"  took  time. 
Before  he  met  Miss  Welsh,  Carlyle  had  been  drawn  to  at 
least  one  woman ;  and  it  may  be  said  without  fear  of  contra-  *, 
diction  that  he  could  not  possibly  have  made  any  woman 
happy.  Still,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  loved  his  wife 
with  all  the  intensity  of  his  fervid  nature.  The  loss  of  her 
at  the  crowning  moment  of  his  life  left  him  a  broken  man, 
and  gave  to  our  literature  the  record  of  a  remorse  as  deep 
and  heart-shaking  as  Lear's  last  agony  over  Cordelia.  No 
merely  imagined  tragedy  is  darker  than  the  true  tale  of  his 
unwitting  offence,  the  dramatic  conjunction  of  his  greatest 
triumph  with  his  greatest  loss,  and  his  finding  no  place  of 
repentance,  though  he  sought  it  carefully  with  tears. 

At  first,  however,  in  spite  of  their  narrow  means  and 
uncertain  prospects,  the  skies  were  fair.  The  first  year  of 
married  life^  was  spent  in  Edinburgh,  in  a  comfortable,  well- 

1  They  were  married  at  Templand  on  October  17th,  1826. 


INTRO  D  UC  TION.  xvii 

furnished  house,  with  a  certain  amount  of  society;  and  then 
from  motives  of  economy,  they  removed  to  Craigenputtoch,  a 
property  of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  in  the  wilds  of  Dumfries.  Carlyle 
had  hoped  that  marriage  would  v/ork  some  sweeping  change 
in  his  health  and  spirits ;  but  in  this  he  was  disappointed, 
as  he  was  in  the  hope  of  various  university  chairs  at  St. 
Andrews,  Edinburgh,  and  London.  In  a  mood  almost  of 
despair,  he  settled  down  in  his  "  Dunscore  Patmos  "  to  read 
and  meditate  and  write  and  make  a  way  for  himself  in 
literature.  At  Comely  Bank,  his  Edinburgh  residence,  he 
had  begun  a  novel  which  he  threw  aside  at  the  seventh 
chapter.  The  acceptance  of  an  occasional  article  kept  the 
wolf  from  the  door;  and  from  time  to  time,  their  friends 
supplied  them  with  various  necessaries  of  life.  Carlyle 
spent  his  day  in  his  study,  or  wandered  solitary  over  the 
moors  afoot  or  on  horseback.  His  young  wife  slaved  at 
the  housekeeping,  lonelier  than  he.  An  occasional  visitor 
broke  the  gray  monotony  of  their  lives  ;  but  no  two  people 
in  Britain  lived  more  retired.  Crusoe,  on  the  Island  of  Deso- 
.4ation,  was  hardly  more  completely  shut  out  from  his  kind. 

In  the  journal,  that  refuge  of  the  lonely  and  impulsive, 
Carlyle  found  a  vent  for  his  surcharged  heart;  and  in  1829 
resumed  irregular  entries  in  a  book  he  had  already  used  for 
the  same  purpose.  The  death  of  his  sister  Margaret  in  June, 
1830,  doubtless  set  his  mind  powerfully  at  work.  "Often  I 
think  of  many  solemn  and  sad  things  which,  indeed,  I  do 
not  wish  to  forget,"  ^  he  writes  his  mother  in  this  year. 
The  month  of  September  was  particularly  rich  in  the  harvest 
of  thought.     About  the   12th,  he  notes:    "I   am  going  to 

write Nonsense.     It  is  on  '  Clothes.'     Heaven  be  my 

comforter."  On  October  19th,  he  writes  to  his  brother: 
"For  myself  here  I  am  leading  the  stillest  life;  musing 
amid  the  pale  sunshine,  or  rude  winds  of  October  Tirl-the- 

1  Lett.,  172. 


xviii  INTRODUCTION. 

trees,  when  I  go  walking  in  this   almost   ghastly  solitude ; 

^  and  for  the  rest  writing  with  impetuosity.  .   .   .  What  I  am 

I  writing  is  the  strangest  of  all  things ;  begun  as  an  article  for 

'  Fraser ;   then  found  to  be  too  long  (except  it  were  divided 

in  two);   now  sometimes  looking  as  if  it  would  swell  into  a 

Book.      A  very   singular   piece    I   assure   you!      It   glances 

from  Heaven  to  Earth  and  back  again  in  a  strange,  satirical 

frenzy ;  whether  fine  or  not  remains  to  be  seen.  .  .  . 

"  Teufclsdreck  (that  is  the  name  of  my  present  Schrift)  will 
be  done  (so  far  —  fifty  pages)  to-morrow."^  Ten  days  later 
he  is  able  to  record  its  completion. 

The  article  in  this  form  was  sent  soon  after  to  Fraser, 
but  not  accepted,  perhaps  not  even  read  ;  for  by  February, 
1 83 1,  Carlyle  has  his  "long  paper  entitled  Thoughts  on 
Clothes  "  back  and  is  busy  recasting  and  expanding  it  into 
book  form.  "  I  can  devise,"  he  writes  his  brother  John, 
"some  more  biography  for  Teufelsdreck ;  give  a  second 
deeper  part  in  the  same  vein,  leading  through  Religion  and 
the  nature  of  Society,  and  Lord  knows  what.  Nay,  the  very 
*  Thoughts,'  slightly  altered  would  make  a  little  volume 
first."  ^  This  would  seem  to  show^  that  Book  I  of  Sartor  is 
the  original  "long  paper,"  that  the  devising  of  "more 
biography "  resulted  in  Book  II,  and  the  "  second  deeper 
part  in  the  same  vein  "  is  Book  III.  From  February  till  the 
end  of  July  ^  he  is  busy  w^ith  the  book,  and  by  August  4th  he 
is  able  to  start  for  London  with  the  completed  manuscript. 
But  the  booksellers  w^ould  have  none  of  it,  and  after 
hawking  it  about  among  the  leading  publishers  for  some  six 
weeks.  Carlyle  went  home  and  laid  the  book  aside  for  two 
years.  Probably  no  changes  were  made  in  the  text,  in  the 
interval,  for  Carlyle  was  now  very  busy  with  his  great 
essays.     Then,  in  November,  1833,  ^^  ^^^^  ^our  chapters 

1  Lett.,  i73f.  2  ji,id,^  183. 

3  Ibid.,  191,  212,  213,  221. 


INTR  OD  UC  TION.  xix 

were  printed  in  Fraser.  The  last  instalment  came  out  in 
August,  1834.  In  January  and  June  it  did  not  appear. 
For  it,  the  author  records,  he  received  ^82,  i  j.,  and  fifty- 
eight  "  really  readable  copies  of  107  pages  "  ^  struck  off  from 
the  magazine  types,  which  he  distributed  among  friends 
north  of  the  Tweed.  Few  of  them  were  even  courteous 
enough  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  it;  and  on  the  general 
reading  public  it  made  no  impression,  except  repulsion  and 
disgust.  Mrs.  Carlyle  pronounced  it  "A  work  of  genius, 
dear."  But  she  was  almost  alone  in  her  opinion.  Father 
O'Shea  in  Cork,  and  Emerson  in  Concord,  were  apparently 
the  only  other  persons  in  the  world  who  saw  anything  in  the 
book.  To  the  American  admirer  belongs  the  honor  of  bring- 
ing out  the  real  editio  pri7iceps  anonymously  in  1836  with  a 
laudatory  preface  by  Everett.  Though  Emerson  shore  Sartor 
of  the  capitals  wherein  his  heart  delighted,  he  made  a  good 
bargain  with  the  publishers,  and  saw  that  Carlyle  received 
every  dollar  of  his  dues.^  The  first  English  edition  did  not 
appear  till  two  years  later,  and  a  third  was  not  needed  for 
more  than  another  decade.  Before  Carlyle's  death,  a  popular 
edition  of  30,000  copies  had  been  printed  and  sold.  The 
text  was  very  correctly  printed  in  Fraser;  and  between  the 
first  form  of  the  book  and  the  last,  only  the  fewest  changes 
have  been  made.  The  present  edition  reproduces  the  text 
of  1874,  with  a  few  corrections  which  are  indicated  in  the 
notes. 

II. 

"  The  first  genesis  of  Sa?'tor  I  remember  well  enough  and 
the  very  spot  (at  Templand)  where  the  notion  of  astonish- 
ment at  Clothes  first  struck  me,"  ^  is  Carlyle's  own  account 

1  Lett.,  442. 

2  See  Correspondence  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  I,  86,  98,  122,  131. 
Boston,  1886.  3  i;an.,  II,  190. 


XX  INTRODUCTION. 

of  how  the  book  originated ;  but  this  moment  of  illumination 
is  plainly  a  case  of  unconscious  memory.  The  germ  idea, 
as  has  been  often  pointed  out,  is  contained  in  the  Tale  of  a 
Tub.  That  Carlyle  knew  Swift  familiarly  is  indisputable. 
To  his  college  friends  he  was  known  as  "  Jonathan "  and 
*'the  Dean,"  as  much  from  his  known  liking  for  Swift's 
writings  as  his  natural  satiric  bent ;  and  he  recommends  the 
Tale  of  a  Tub.,  by  name,  to  his  brother  John.  To  put  the 
matter  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  Carlyle  himself  refers, 
in  Sartor,  to  Swift  and  the  passage  quoted  below.' 

"  The  worshippers  of  this  deity  had  also  a  system  of  their 
belief  which  seemed  to  turn  upon  the  following  fundamental. 
They  held  the  universe  to  be  a  large  suit  of  clothes 
which  invests  everything ;  that  the  earth  is  invested  by  the 
air ;  the  air  is  invested  by  the  stars :  and  the  stars  are 
invested  by  the  Frimum  Mobile.  Look  on  this  globe  of 
earth,  and  you  will  find  it  to  be  a  very  complete  and  fashion- 
able dress.  What  is  that  which  some  call  land  but  a  fine 
coat  faced  with  green,  or  the  sea  but  a  waistcoat  of  water- 
tabby  ?  Proceed  to  the  various  works  of  the  creation,  you 
will  find  how  curious  journeyman  Nature  hath  been  to  trim 
up  the  vegetable  beaux;  observe  how  sparkish  a  periwig 
adorns  the  head  of  a  beech,  and  what  a  fine  doublet  of  white 
satin  is  worn  by  the  birch.  To  conclude  from  all,  what 
is  man  himself  but  a  microcoat,  or  rather  a  complete  suit  of 
clothes  with  all  the  trimmings  ?  As  to  the  body  there  can 
be  no  dispute,  but  examine  even  the  acquirements  of  his 
mind,  you  will  find  them  all  contribute  in  their  order 
towards  furnishing  out  an  exact  dress.  To  instance  no 
more,  is  not  religion  a  cloak,  honesty  a  pair  of  shoes  worn 
out  in  the  dirt,  self-love  a  surtout,  vanity  a  shirt,  and 
conscience  a  pair  of  breeches  ? "  -  (I  omit  the  drastic 
Swiftian   conclusion    which   must   have   found  favor  in   the 

1  Bk.  Ill,  cap.  xi.  2  7;,/^  ^,fa  Tub,  Sect.  III. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxi 

-eyes  of  the  man  who  wrote  Count  Zaehdarm's  epitaph.) 
Here  undoubtedly  is  the  seed  thought  which  lay  chance- 
sown  so  long  in  Carlyle's  mind  that  he  had  forgotten  its 
existence  and  when  it  sprang  up  and  bore  fruit  a  hundred- 
fold, imagined  it  to  be  some  spontaneous,  self-derived  tilth. 
While  this  is  admitted,  there  is  between  the  passage  in  Swift 
and  the  completed  Sartor  all  the  difference  between  the 
bushel  of  seed-corn  and  the  bursting  garner.  The  seed  fell 
in  rich  soil  and  it  was  most  assiduously  cultivated.  A  very 
large  part  of  the  book  owes  nothing  at  all  to  Swift.  In  the 
second  portion,  the  story  of  Teufelsdrockh's  life,  his  clothes- 
philosophy  sinks  out  of  sight  altogether;  and  such  chapters 
as  the  fifth  and  eighth  of  the  third  book  are  too  weighty  and 
earnest  to  be  really  part  and  parcel  of  what  was  in  the  first 
instance  a  jest.  The  influence  of  Swift's  thought  is 
strongest  in  the  first  or  original  portion.  The  rest  is  really 
made  up  of  Carlyle's  own  experience  of  life,  and  his  brood- 
ing over  all  problems  that  can  engage  the  active  brain,  from 
the  reality  of  the  universe  and  the  existence  of  God  to  the 
condition  of  the  poor  and  the  phenomenon  of  the  man  of 
fashion.  The  book  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  epitome  of  all 
that  Carlyle  thought  and  felt  in  the  course  of  the  first  thirty- 
five  years  of  his  residence  on  this  planet.  Many  things 
which  he  wishes  to  say  that  cannot  be  ranged  under  any 
rubric  of  the  philosophy  of  clothes,  such  as  his  criticism  of 
duelling,  are,  notwithstanding,  given  room.  This  position  I 
hope  to  make  good. 

Such  an  explanation  of  Sartor  as  Mr.  Larkin's  ^  must 
be  regarded  as  an  exercise  of  pure  fancy,  in  a  line  with  the 
old-fashioned  allegorical  expositions  of  Scripture,  like  Dr. 
Alabaster's  sermon  on  Adam,  Sheth,  Enosh.  If,  instead  of 
assuming  the  book  to  be  an  enigma,  we  simply  examine  the 

1  Henry  Larkin,  Carlyle  and  the  Open  Secret  of  his  life,  caps.  i-iv. 
Lond.,  1886. 


xxii  INTR  on  UC  TION. 

process  by  which  it  grew,  light  breaks  upon  us,  and  its 
significance  becomes  unmistakable.  The  sources  of  it  can 
be  demonstrated  to  be  fourfold.  The  first  in  importance  is 
the  journal  which  Carlyle  kept  at  Craigenputtoch  from  1828 
to  1830.  Extracts  from  this  have  been  printed  with 
grotesque  inaccuracy  by  Mr.  Froude  in  his  Carlyle' s  Early 
Life,  and  can  be  consulted  there.  A  much  safer  authority 
is  a  MS.  copy  in  the  possession  of  Professor  Norton,  which 
he  kindly  allowed  me  to  use.  The  second  source  is 
Carlyle's  novel  Wotton  Reinfj-ed,  which  never  got  beyond 
the  seventh  chapter.  From  this  not  only  were  many  long 
passages  transferred  bodily  to  Sartor,  but  also  the  main 
outlines  of  the  love-story  in  Book  Second.  His  essays  form 
the  third  source,  notably  the  Signs  of  the  Tiines}  Character- 
istics^ also  contains  much  of  Sartor's  thought.  The  fourth 
source  is  his  translations  from  the  German  ;  and  this  is  not 
a  scanty  stream.  It  is,  however,  of  less  importance  than 
those  mentioned.  From  Goethe  he  gets  fundamental 
thought,  it  is  true,  but  from  Richter,  Schiller,  Musaeus 
Tieck  and  Hoffmann,  he  takes  chiefly  ornamental  phrases, 
and  illustrations.  All  those  I  have  discovered  are  indicated 
in  the  Notes.  In  many  cases  the  thought  is  found  moulded 
into  two  or  three  different  shapes  before  it  takes  the  final 
impress  of  Carlyle's  signet  in  Sa?'tor.^  His  use  of  his  mate- 
rial is  characteristically  '*  canny."  No  good  thing  is  allowed 
to  pass  unused,  nothing  is  wasted,  and  many  places  show 
the  labor  of  the  file.  Often  his  borrowings  were  simply  held 
in  his  wonderful  memory  and  set  down  unwittingly;  but 
again,  the  process  was  distinctly  conscious.  Long  extracts 
are  copied  word  for  word  from  Wotto7i  Reijifred, —  notably 
the  account  of  Teufelsdrockh's  meeting  with  Blumine  and 

1  Ediiibio'gh  Review,  No.  98  (1829),  and  Essays,  II,  135-162. 

2  Ibid.,  No.  108  (1 831),  and  Essays,  III,  5-49. 
2  See  I,  19,  n.  send  passivi. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxiii 

Towgood  on  their  wedding- journey.  In  this  case  the 
patching  is  clumsy.  Teufelsdrockh  cannot  ride  up  the 
mountain-road  which  is  still  practicable  for  a  barouche-and- 
four.  And  why  should  the  wedding-party  be  bound  south 
for  England  ?  The  passage  fits  into  its  context  in  Wotton 
Reinfred^  but  torn  from  it  only  shows  the  author's  haste  and 
that  the  end  forgot  the  beginning.  Carlyle's  task  from 
February  to  August  in  183 1  was  drawing  into  the  compass 
of  a  single  volume  all  the  best  that  he  had  thought  in  his 
past  life. 

III. 

The  statement  made  by  Carlyle  that  nothing  in  Sartor  is 
true,  "  symbolical  myth  all,"  has  been  repeated  by  Mr. 
Froude^  and  other  biographers,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Carlyle  contradicts  himself.  The  only  fact  he  admits  as 
biographical  is  the  famous  episode  in  the  Rue  St.  Thomas 
de  I'Enfer,  otherwise  Leith  Walk  ;  but  in  the  same  work 
Carlyle  confesses  to  various  other  facts  which  are  more  than 
"symbolical,"  such  as  his  first  day  at  school.^  Indeed, 
even  brief  and  limited  research  makes  it  clear  that  a  very 
large  meaning  must  be  attached  to  the  term,  "  symbolical 
myth,"  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  title  "  Life  and 
Opinions  of  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  "  is  simply  the  usual 
innocent  device  of  authors  to  avoid  taking  the  public  openly 
into  their  confidence,  when  their  books  are  of  an  intimate 
and  personal  character,  like  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Sonnets  from 
the  Portuguese."  This  has,  heretofore,  been  generally  sus- 
pected; it  can  now  be  clearly  proven.  Sartor  is  not  only 
the  epitome  of  all  that  Carlyle  had  thought;  it  contains  the 
fine  essence  of  all  that  he  had  felt. 

The  first  draft  of  Sartor  was  the  novel  \Votto7i  Rein/red. 
This  was  begun  in  January,  1827,  in  the  first  months  of 
1  C.  E.  L.,  I,  103.  2  AVw.,  T,  46. 


xxi  V  INTR  on  UC  TION. 

Carlyle's  wedded  life,  and  finally  thrown  aside  about  June  4th 
of  the  same  year.  His  letters  ^  of  this  time  show  how  hard 
he  worked  at  it,  and  what  an  interest  Mrs.  Carlyle  took  in  it. 
The  statement  that  it  was  given  wholly  to  the  flames  cannot 
be  correct,  for  it  has  been  since  published.  While  it  is  not 
interesting  in  itself,  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  for  the 
student  of  Sartor  and  of  Carlyle's  literary  methods.  This 
will  be  plain  from  a  glance  at  its  contents.  The  book  con- 
sists of  seven  chapters,  which  are  carefully  finished  and 
ready  for  the  press.  The  hero  is  a  young  man  of  morose 
temperament  who  has  been  crossed  in  love.  The  object  of 
his  devotion,  Jane  Montagu,  has  been  carried  off  by  a 
"  tiger-ape  "  of  an  Indian  officer;  and  the  unhappy  lover  is 
plunged  into  the  deepest  despair.  In  the  first  chapter  his 
friend  is  trying  to  bring  him  to  reason,  and  prescribes  a  visit 
to  a  certain  physician  of  souls,  called  Moseley. 

The  second  chapter  gives  Wotton's  history  to  the  time  of 
his  unfortunate  love-affair.  He  has  been  brought  up  in  a 
secluded  part  of  the  country  by  his  mother,  a  truly  religious 
woman.  At  school  he  is  bullied  by  the  other  boys  and 
nicknamed  "weeping  Wotton,"  till  he  thrashes  one  of  his 
tormentors.  The  death  of  a  little  sister  makes  a  deep 
impression  upon  his  shy,  sensitive  nature,  and  increases  his 
natural  tendency  to  sadness.  In  due  course,  he  attends  the 
university  in  a  distant  city,  where  he  reads  much,  especially 
mathematics.  He  finds  his  fellow-collegians  uncongenial, 
and  repels  all  advances  by  his  reserved  and  sarcastic 
manner.  There  is  also  little  in  the  university  system  of 
discipline  and  instruction  for  him  to  admire.  Thrown  back 
thus  upon  himself,  he  thinks  much  on  the  fundamental 
problems  of  life,  studies  the  skeptical  writers  of  modern 
France,  and  begins  to  doubt  the  creed  in  which  he  has  been 
brought   up.       He  ends  in  blank  unbelief,   and  something 

1  Lett.,  20,  23,  32,  45  f. 


INTRO  D  UC  TION.  XXV 

very  like  despair.  In  this  mood  he  quits  the  university  and 
for  a  short  time  studies  law.  Disgusted  with  the  technicali- 
ties of  the  subject,  he  abandons  it  and  retires  to  the  country. 
Near  him  lives  the  single  friend  he  made  at  college, 
Bernard  Swane,  the  "  perfect  opposite  "  of  himself.  Famil- 
iar intercourse  with  a  man  of  Bernard's  frank,  hopeful 
nature  keeps  Wotton  back  from  madness  and  utter  despair. 
On  a  visit  to  Bernard,  one  morning,  he  meets  a  young 
beauty,  called  Jane  Montagu :  and  the  occasion  is  described 
at  some  length.  One  notable  detail  is  the  suppression  of  a 
"  Philistine "  by  means  of  Wotton's  adroit  questionings. 
The  youth  and  maiden  fall  in  love  with  each  other,  and  all 
goes  well  till  an  ancient  maiden  aunt  interferes.  There  is  a 
tearful  final  interview  and  they  separate.  Report  says  that 
Jane  is  to  marry  Edmund  Waller,  a  young,  well-connected, 
wealthy  officer,  whom  Wotton  holds  to  be  a  mere  libertine. 
For  some  unexplained  reason,  this  marriage  does  not  take 
place ;  but  his  disappointment  makes  Wotton  ten  times 
more  gloomy  than  before.  He  looks  forward  to  death  as 
the  relief  from  all  evils. 

Chapter  Three  is  short.  Bernard  and  Wotton  set  out 
upon  their  rather  ill-defined  journey  to  Moseley.  The 
scenery  they  pass  through  is  distinctly  Scottish.  At  their 
first  inn,  the  waiters  bring  Wotton  a  locket  containing  a 
miniature  which  has  been  found  in  the  mountains.  The 
portrait  shows  an  unmistakable  likeness  to  himself.  Though 
he  knows  that  he  has  never  sat  for  his  picture,  he  takes  the 
locket  with  him,  leaving  a  few  guineas  as  a  guarantee,  and 
his  address  in  case  any  one  with  a  better  right  should  lay 
claim  to  it.  His  half-untold  fancy  is  that  it  may  have 
belonged  to  his  lost  love. 

On  the  next  day,  the  two  friends  proceed  on  their  journey, 
and  meet  a  mysterious  stranger.  His  name  is  Maurice 
Herbert,  and  he  conducts  the  travellers  to  his  mansion,  the 


XX  vi  INTRODUCTION. 

House  of  the  Wold,  such  a  convenient,  emblematic  castle 
as  Wilhelm  Meister  strays  into  during  his  strange  appren- 
ticeship. Here  is  met  a  company  of  scholars  and  philos- 
ophers, who  reason  after  dinner,  like  Milton's  fiends,  on  the 
eternal  riddles  of  life.  The  chief  significance  of  the  discus- 
sion lies  in  the  importation  into  it  of  Kantian  philosophy, 
which  the  rest  regard  as  they  might  a  rabid  dog.  After 
this  symposium,  the  only  other  events  worth  noting  are  an 
encounter  between  the  rivals,  Reinfred  and  Waller,  and, 
later  a  meeting  between  Reinfred  and  Jane  Montagu.  With 
a  long-winded  explanation  of  the  latter's  mysterious  conduct, 
the  seventh  chapter  ends.     The  rest  is  silence. 

Now,  the  points  of  resemblance  between  these  three 
personages,  Carlyle,  Reinfred  and  Teufelsdrockh,  both  in 
character  and  career,  are  too  close  to  be  the  result  of  mere 
chance.  As  boys,  all  three  are  shy,  sensitive,  easily  reduced 
to  tears  and  have  been  trained  to  religion  by  a  pious 
mother.  At  school  they  are  bullied,  at  the  university  they 
are  ill-taught.  Among  a  crowd  of  uncongenial  mates  they 
each  find  pnly  one  true  friend :  Carlyle  has  his  Irving ; 
Reinfred,  Swane;  and  Teufelsdrockh,  Towgood.  As  they 
reach  manhood,  all  three  part  company  with  the  creed  of 
their  childhood;  and  in  each  case  the  loss  increases  the 
natural  tendency  to  sarcasm  and  misanthropic  gloom.  After 
leaving  the  university  all  three  study  law  for  a  time  and  give 
it  up  in  disgust.  The  two  heroes  of  fiction  have  unhappy 
love-affairs  which  darken  tenfold  their  former  gloom. 
Whether  this  is  true  or  not  of  Carlyle  is  a  question  still  to 
be  settled.  Carlyle  and  Teufelsdrockh  wrestle  through  the 
storm  into  calm ;  and  though  Wotto)i  Reinfred  is  not  com- 
pleted, even  there  it  is  clear  that  the  way  is  being  paved  for 
the  happiness  of  the  star-crossed  lovers.  In  some  points, 
the  resemblance  between  the  hero  of  the  Rei7iinisce?ices  and 
Wotton  is  closer  than  between  Carlyle  and  Teufelsdrockh. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxvii 

The  first  little  Janet  Carlyle,^  died  at  the  age  of  three ;  from 
Wotton,  "  death  had  snatched  away  "  "  a  little  elder  sister  " 
"  before  he  knew  what  the  King  of  Terrors  was."  ^  A  beau- 
tiful girl,  in  whom  Carlyle  undoubtedly  was  interested,  did 
marry  an  Indian  officer.^  Throughout  Wotto7i  Rein/red,  the 
scenery,  atmosphere  and  circumstances  are  those  with  which 
Carlyle  was  familiar,  that  is  to  say,  Scottish.  On  the 
other  hand,  though  Reinfred  does  not,  both  Carlyle  and 
Teufelsdrockh  teach  private  pupils  and  "subsist  by  the 
faculty  of  translation  "  after  leaving  college.  These  are  the 
broad  outlines  of  resemblance  between  the  personal  history 
of  the  writer  and  the  careers  of  his  two  puppets  or  literary 
doubles.  Other  minute  resemblances  are  traced  carefully  in 
the  notes  to  Book  Two.  When  this  detailed  evidence  is 
considered  in  its  mass,  and  taken  with  Carlyle's  zeal  for 
truth  and  his  hatred  of  fiction,  as  well  as  the  fact  that 
a  writer's  personal  experience  generally  forms  the  basis  of 
his  first  novel,  it  will,  I  think,  be  hard  to  resist  the  conclu- 
sion that  Wotton  Reinfred  and  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh 
are  simple  aliases  of  Thomas  Carlyle. 


IV. 

Sunny  is  not  the  adjective  one  would  select  as  most  aptly 
describing  the  temper  of  any  of  Carlyle's  works ;  and  yet 
there  is  in  Sartor  a  certain  grace  which  the  mind  recognizes 
and  rejoices  in  as  the  senses  recognize  and  rejoice  in  the 
return  of  light  and  warmth  in  spring.  In  virtue  of  this 
peculiar  charm,  found  nowhere  else  so  frequent  or  so  strong 

1  Two  of  Carlyle's  sisters  were  christened  Janet.  C.  E.  L.,  I,  9 ; 
E.  Lett,  ix.  2  X.  IV,  c.,  25. 

3  Carlyle  calls  him  an  "idle  Ex-Captain  of  Sepoys,"  Rem.,  II,  125. 
Mr.  Strachey  says  he  belonged  to  the  7th  Hussars,  Lord  Anglesea's 
crack  regiment.     Nineteenth  Century,  Sept.,  1892. 


xxviii  INTRODUCTION. 

in  all  his  writings,  the  book  constitutes  a  class  by  itself. 
Nor  is  it  hard  to  account  for  the  difference.  Sartor  was 
Carlyle's  first  and  only  entirely  creative  work.  In  fashion- 
ing it  he  felt  the  joy  of  the  artist  in  seeing  the  thought  of 
his  brain  taking  shape  under  his  hands,  the  joy  of  the  artist 
as  the  face  of  the  Madonna  grows  out  of  the  blank  canvas, 
the  joy  of  the  sculptor  as  the  sun-god  emerges  from  the 
marble.  The  speed  at  which  he  worked  attests  this,  as  well 
as  the  significant  absence  of  those  unutterable  groanings 
which  waited  on  the  building  of  his  great  histories.  Again, 
Carlyle  had  not  at  this  time  parted  with  his  mother's  faith. 
True,  he  told  Irving  that  he  did  not  think  of  the  Christian 
religion  as  his  friend  did  ;  that  is,  as  befitted  a  professed 
minister  of  that  religion ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  Scotch- 
man of  Carlyle's  sincerity  who  takes  sittings  in  the  kirk  and 
holds  family  worship  ^  cannot  be  considered  as  in  a  state  of 
violent  revolt  against  his  inherited  creed.  Again,  he  had  at 
this  time,  love.  He  had  but  lately  married  a  beautiful  and 
brilliant  woman,  without  w^hom,  in  spite  of  all  the  unhappi- 
ness  he  caused  and  suffered,  his  life  would  not  have  been 
complete.  The  composition  of  Sartor  marks  the  beginning 
of  that  time  of  which  he  was  to  write  as  a  lonely  gray- 
haired  man  the  saddest  words  that  surely  ever  blotted 
paper  :  '*  I  was  rich  once,  had  I  known  it,  very  rich ;  and 
now,  I  am  become  poor  unto  the  end."  Again,  he  had  at 
this  time  hope.  He  had  not  yet  lost  all  expectation  of 
human  virtue  and  courage  and  wisdom.  He  had  not  yet 
conceived  the  world  as  a  ship  of  fools,  driving  without  a 
helm,  in  a  black  night  of  storm  to  certain  wreck.  There  is 
gloom  in  Sartor,  but  it  is  pierced  by  lightnings  and  flooded 
with  bursts  of  the  upper  glory  ;  and  there  are  serene,  sunlit 
spaces  into  which  the  clouds  do  not  intrude.  For  in  spite  of 
disappointment  and  poverty  and  suffering  in  body  and  mind, 

'^Lett,  5. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxix 

Carlyle  still  possessed  in  large  measure  the  things  which  go 
to  make  life  full  and  sweet,  —  joy  of  his  task,  faith,  love, 
hope  ;  and  all  these  influences  find  voice  in  his  book. 

There  is  one  more  element  in  the  undeniable  charm  of 
Sartor  yet  to  be  considered.  Let  us  for  a  moment  imagine 
a  Sartor  consisting  of  the  first  and  third  books  only.  We 
should  have  "  Opinions  of  Herr  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  " 
in  plenty,  and  a  very  great  deal  of  his  clothes-philosophy ; 
but  could  we  spare  his  "Life"?  In  other  words,  if  the 
heart  of  the  book  w^re  torn  out,  the  story  of  the  "  snow-and- 
rose-bloom  maiden  "  Blumine,  would  the  "  Sorrows  of  Teu- 
felsdrockh" ever  have  aroused  that  widespread  sympathy 
which  Emerson  assures  us  the  world  gives  freely  to  the 
lover  .?  It  may  well  be  doubted.  Here  Carlyle  touches  the 
universal  heart.  Teufelsdrockh,  the  solitary  philosopher, 
the  gloomy,  misanthropical  skeptic  excites  but  moderate  in- 
terest, and  is  indeed  hardly  intelligible.  But  Teufelsdrockh 
in  love  appeals  to  the  experience  or  premonitions  of  all. 
Carlyle  is  not  usually  ranked  with  those  who  have  spoken 
eloquently  of  the  great  passion,  but  w^here  in  our  literature 
can  we  find  another  tale  of  pure  devotion  to  a  woman  told 
so  simply  and  so  well  ?  That  he  was  competent  to  speak 
on  this  topic,  his  published  letters  to  his  wife  are  sufficient 
evidence.  No  small  part  of  Sartor's  charm  depends  upon 
the  Blumine  episode.     It  is  important  for  another  reason. 

It  is  strange  to  think  that  it  should  be  the  duty  of  Carlyle's 
editor  to  discuss  his  Lilis  and  Frederikas.  But  in  this  case 
it  is  unavoidable.  Sartor  is  autobiographical.  The  close 
resemblance  between  the  career  of  Teufelsdrockh  and  that 
of  his  creator  has  been  already  pointed  out.  The  question 
naturally  arises,  "  Is  this  central  incident  in  Carlyle's  spir- 
itual biography  without  its  parallel  in  his  actual  life  ? " 
It  has,  in  fact,  been  already  asked,  and  it  might  be  lightly 
dismissed,  if  so  many  contradictory  answers  had  not  been 


XXX  INTRODUCTION. 

given.  As  the  question  has  been  put  and  various  answers 
have  been  given,  it  is  necessary  to  review  them  all  with  due 
care. 

Who  was  Blumine  ?  Froude  says  positively  "Margaret 
Gordon  was  the  original,  so  far  as  there  was  an  original, 
of  Blumine,  in  Sartor  Resartits.''  ^  Carlyle  met  her  in  Kirk- 
caldy in  1817,  when  he  was  a  young  man  of  twenty-two  who 
knew  his  own  mind.  Miss  Gordon  was  born  in  Prince 
Edward  Island,^  now  a  province  of  Canada,  and  was  con- 
nected with  a  well-known  local  family,  the  Hydes  of  East 
River.  Her  mother  was  married  first  to  a  Dr.  Gordon, 
Margaret's  father,  and  after  his  death  to  Dr.  Guthrie.  It  is 
said  that  both  were  army  surgeons,  and  that  the  latter  was 
stationed  at  Halifax.  In  Froude's  opinion,  the  two  young 
people  had  been  drawn  to  each  other.  "  Two  letters  from 
her  .  .  .  show  that  on  both  sides  their  regard  for  each  other 
had  found  expression."  He  states  further  that  "circum- 
stances .  .  .  forbade  an  engagement  between  them."  The  let- 
ter which  he  prints  in  support,  though  stiff  and  formal, 
certainly  implies  intimacy  ;  and  the  significant  little  postscript 
is  confirmation  strong  :  "  I  give  you  not  my  address,  because 
I  dare  not  promise  to  see  you."  Many  years  afterwards, 
Carlyle,  an  old  grief-stricken  man,  alludes  to  the  incident 
with  a  certain  mournful  tenderness.  Miss  Gordon  was  "  by 
far  the  cleverest  and  brightest "  of  the  "  young  ladies  "  of 
Kirkcaldy.  She  was  "  a  kind  of  alien,"  "  poorish,  proud 
and  well-bred."  With  her  Carlyle  had  "  some  acquaintance, 
and  it  might  easily  have  been  more,  had  she  and  her  Aunt 
and  our  economic  and  other  circumstances  liked."  This 
admission  is  of  course  the  basis  of  Frqude's  statement  just 
given.     "  She   continued,"  Carlyle    proceeds,  "  for  perhaps 

1  C.  E.  Z.,  I,  52. 

2  Carlyle  says  vaguely,  'born,  I  think,  in  New  Brunswick,'  Rem., 
II,  58. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxxi 

some  three  years  a  figure  hanging  more  or  less  in  my  fancy, 
on  the  usual  ro7naniic^^  or  latterly  quite  elegiac  and  silent 
terms."  ^  The  portraits  of  Margaret  and  her  aunt  are 
sketched  here  in  much  the  same  colors  as  in  Sartor.  He 
alludes  to  their  leave-taking  at  Kirkcaldy  in  1819.  The  very 
words  used, "  good-bye,  then,"  have  their  place  in  his  memory, 
and  suggest  the  parting  of  Teufelsdrockh  and  his  ''  flower- 
goddess."  All  this  seems  clear  enough  and  points  to  one 
conclusion.  The  heroine's  after  history  is  stated  vaguely  in 
the  Reminiscences.  The  two  met  some  twenty  years  later  on 
horseback  at  the  gate  in  Hyde  Park,  "  when  her  eyes  (but 
that  was  all)  said  to  me  almost  touchingly,  "  Yes,  yes,  that  is 
you."  She  married  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir)  Ronald  Bannerman, 
and  accompanied  him  to  Prince  Edward  Island,"  when  he 
came  out  as  Governor  in  1850.  Lady  Bannerman  was  long 
remembered  in  the  island,  and  it  is  stated  that  before  the 
appearance  of  either  the  Reminiscences  or  Froude's  Life.,  she 
was  known  in  the  province  as  the  original  of  Blumine. 
"  Islanders  "  were  interested  in  reading  Sartor^  because  the 
heroine  was  connected  with  local  history.  If  this  is  true, 
the  only  source  of  the  information  would  be  Lady  Banner- 
man  herself,  for  previous  to  1881,  there  was  no  printed 
statement  to  connect  the  famous  man  of  letters  and  the  wife 
of  an  obscure  colonial  governor.  So  far,  then,  Carlyle's 
testimony,  documentary  evidence  and  local  tradition  agree. 
But  of  late  a  counter  claim  has  been  put  forward. 

When  Carlyle  went  to  London,  as  tutor  to  the  young 
Bullers  in  1822,  he  met  a  friend  of  the  family,  to  whom  he 
often  alludes  by  the  pet  name  "  dear  Kitty."  Catherine 
Aurora  Fitzpatrick  was  the  daughter  of  a  famous  Irish  sol- 
dier, and  an  Indian  princess  who  traced  her  descent  from 
the    blood    royal    of    Persia.     She    was    an    heiress    and    a 

1  Italics  mine.  —  A.  M.     2  Rem.,  II,  57. 
3  Not  Nova  Scotia  as  usually  stated. 


XXXll 


IN  TR  OD  UC  TION. 


beauty.  "  A  strangely-complexioned  young  lady,  with  soft,^ 
brown  eyes,  and  floods  of  bronzc-xQ.&  hair,  really  a  pretty- 
looking,  smiling  and  amiable,  though  most  foreign  bit 
of  magnificence  and  kindly  splendour,"  ^  is  Carlyle's  word- 
picture  of  her  as  he  saw  her  first.  Her  character  is 
sketched  by  the  same  master  hand.  "  She  had  one  of  the 
prettiest  smiles,  a  visible  sense  of  humour  (the  slight  merry 
curve  of  her  upper  lip,  right  side  of  it  only,  the  carriage  of ' 
her  head  and  eyes,  on  such  occasions,  the  quiet  little  things 
she  said  in  that  kind,  and  her  low-toned  hearty  laugh 
were  noticeable)  ;  this  was  perhaps  her  most  spiritual  qual- 
ity ;  of  developed  intellect  she  had  not  much,  though  not 
wanting  in  discernment.  Amiable,  affectionate,  graceful, 
might  be  called  attractive  (not  sUjh  enough  for  the  title 
'pretty,'  not  tall  enough  for  'beautiful');  had  something 
low-voiced,  languidly  harmonious,  placid,  sensuous,  loved 
perfumes,  etc.  ;  a  Yi.'Ai-Begimi^  in  short ;  interesting  speci- 
men of  the  Semi-oriental  Englishwoman."^  It  is  a  pleasant 
picture.  To  all  the  rest,  she  adds  the  two  chief  charms  of 
Lalage.  Carlyle  is  not  the  only  witness  to  her  loveliness 
and  amiable  character.^  As  to  the  relationship  between 
them,  he  says  without  any  hesitation,  "  It  strikes  me  now, 
more  than  it  did  then,"  that  Mrs.  Strachey  "  could  have 
liked  to  see  '  dear  Kitty '  and  myself  come  together  and  so 
continue  near  her,  both  of  us,  through  life  ;  the  good,  kind 
soul  .  .  .  and  Kitty  too,  .  .  .  might  perhaps  have  been 
charmed.  None  knows."  *  It  seems  plain,  that  before 
they  met,  the  interest  of  the  two  young  people  had  been 
excited  in  each  other.  Why  else  should  Miss  Kirkpatrick 
have  twitched  the  label  off  his  trunk  as  she  ran  up  stairs 
that  night  of  their  first  meeting  1  and  why  should  Carlyle 

1  Rem.,  II,  117.       '^  Ibid.,  125. 

2  lVest?ninster,  Aug.,  1S94  ;  Nineteoith  Century,  Sept.,  1892. 
^  Rem.,  II,  125. 


INTRODUCTION.  xxxiii 

have  noticed  the  girlish  prank  and  recorded  the  trivial  inci- 
dent years  afterwards  ?  To  match  the  rough  man  of  genius 
with  the  beautiful,  amiable  heiress  might  well  have  seemed 
good  to  the  friends  of  both.  Though  Carlyle  was  poor,  and 
by  no  means  a  man  of  the  world,  all  the  women  divined  his 
power  and  foresaw  his  fame.  It  is  clear  that  the  young 
people  had  every  opportunity  for  coming  to  an  understand- 
ing. On  one  occasion  they  travelled  with  a  party  to  Paris. 
They  certainly  were  on  no  unfriendly  footing. 

Was  Miss  Kirkpatrick,  then,  Blumine  ?  Her  friends 
thought  so.  When  Sartor  appeared,  Mrs.  Strachey  told  her 
son,  as  stated  in  his  article,  "  Carlyle  and  the  Rose- 
goddess,"  ^  that  "the  story  of  the  book  is  plain  as  a  pike-staff. 
Teufelsdrockh  is  Thomas  himself.  The  Zahdarms^  are  your 
uncle  and  aunt  BuUer.  Toughgut^  is  young  Charles  Buller. 
Philistine  is  Irving.  The  rose-garden  is  our  garden  with 
roses  at  Shooter's  Hill,  and  the  rose-goddess  is  Kitty." 
Mr.  Strachey  makes  several  minor  points,  such  as  the  coin- 
cidence that  Blumine  is  called  "  Aurora,"  "  Heaven's  Mes- 
senger," and  that  Miss  Kirkpatrick  was  christened  Catherine 
Aurora.  He  says  that  he  has  taken  pains  to  verify  and 
establish  his  facts  ;  and  that  he  considers  Froude's  hypothe- 
sis, as  given  above,  untenable.  Such  strong  statements 
made  by  those  in  such  a  good  position  to  know,  must  carry 
great  weight.     But  more  direct  testimony  is  forthcoming. 

No  later  than  August,  1894,  a  Mrs.  Mercer  states  that  she 
knew  Miss  Kirkpatrick  as  Mrs.  Phillips,  the  wife  of  a  retired 
officer.  On  a  visit  to  her  at  Torquay,  in  1847,  Mrs.  Phillips 
told  her  to  read  Sartor  Resartiis  by  Carlyle.  Her  words  as 
quoted  by  Mrs.  Mercer  are  remarkable.  "  Get  it  {Sartor) 
and  read  the   "  Romance."     I   am  the    heroine  and  every 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  Sept.,  1892,  p.  474. 

2  These  coinages  are  the  admiring  tribute  of  a  dyspeptic  to  people 
blessed  with  normal  digestion.     "  O  dura  messorum  iUa  !  " 


xxxiv  INTRODUCTION. 

word  of  it  is  true.  He  was  then  tutor  to  my  cousin,  Charles 
Buller,  and  had  made  no  name  for  himself,  so  of  course  I 
was  told  that  such  an  idea  could  not  be  thought  of  for  a 
moment.  What  could  I  do  with  everyone  against  it  ?  Now 
anyone  might  be  proud  to  be  his  wife,  and  he  has  married  a 
woman  quite  beneath  him."  ^  The  entire  article  is  open  to 
riticism  of  different  kinds  and  must  be  received  with 
caution.  But  after  making  all  deductions,  it  seems  clear 
that  Miss  Kirkpatrick  looked  upon  herself  as  the  original  of 
Blumine.  It  is  also  clear  that  her  friends  so  regarded  her. 
What  becomes  then  of  Froude's  theory  ? 

Now,  if  it  be  true  that  Lady  Bannerman  was  known  long 
ago  in  Prince  Edward  Island  as  the  heroine  of  Sartor,  and 
if  the  Reminiscences  and  the  letter  printed  by  Froude  mean 
what  they  say,  it  is  plain  that  Carlyle  was  strongly  drawn  to 
Miss  Gordon.  On  the  other  hand,  the  testimony  of  Mrs. 
Strachey  and  Mrs.  Mercer,  again  confirmed  by  Carlyle's  own 
words,  cannot  be  set  aside.  From  them  it  appears  that  a 
marriage  between  Carlyle  and  Miss  Kirkpatrick  had  been 
thought  possible,  by  at  least  one  of  those  most  interested  in 
the  matter.  Again,  it  is  undeniable  that  both  Margaret 
Gordon  and  Catherine  Fitzpatrick  resemble  Blumine  in 
character  and  circumstances.  It  does  not  follow  that  either 
is  the  original  of  Blumine  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other. 

Let  us  consider  once  more  the  genesis  of  Sartor.  The 
first  draft  is  Wotton  Reinfred,  a  novel  begun  four  months 
after  Carlyle's  marriage,  with  the  knowledge,  encourage- 
ment and  cooperation  of  his  wife.  Now,  such  a  man  as 
Carlyle  does  not  sit  down,  in  his  honeymoon  almost,  to  cele- 
brate any  woman  other  than  his  wife,  with  her  knowledge  and 
consent.  Again,  it  has  been  pointed  out,  that  many  traits 
of  Blumine  are  common  to  Jane  Montague,  the  heroine  of 

1  Carlyle  atid  the  "Bljimine  ^^  of  Sartor  Resartus,  Westmmster  Review, 
Aug.,  1894,  pp.  164  f. 


INTRODUCTION.  XXX  V 

Wotton  Reinfred^  and  to  Jane  Welsh.  Her  portrait  shows  a 
vivacious  beauty,  the  index  of  her  wit  and  spirit.  Indeed,  it 
is  very  easy  for  a  special  pleader  to  make  out  a  strong  case 
in  her  favor.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  while  certain 
circumstances  point  to  each  of  the  three,  no  one  can  be 
considered  as  the  original  of  Blumine  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
other  two.  Carlyle  was  an  artist  in  words.  He  needed  a 
portrait  of  a  heroine.  He  took  as  models  the  three  women 
he  knew  best,  as  fair  and  amiable  influences  as  ever  came 
into  the  life  of  genius,  and  painted  from  them  with  master 
strokes,  and  in  unfading  colors,  a  picture  of  ideal  loveli- 
ness. 

It  was  a  true  instinct  which  led  Carlyle  to  "  devise  more 
biography."  The  brightest  pages  of  Sartor  are  those  irradi- 
ated by  the  presence  of  Blumine,  the  "  light-ray  incarnate." 
Without  this  episode,  so  tender,  so  pathetic,  the  book 
would  have  little  more  coherence  than  Colton's  Lacon,  and 
would  remain  a  splendid  chaos  of  weighty  thoughts.  Teu- 
felsdrockh  as  a  person  would  be  as  vague  as  Sordello,  and 
the  human  interest  in  the  book  utterly  lacking.  Blumine  is 
fit  to  take  her  place  among  the  Shining  Ones  of  our  litera- 
ture by  the  side  of  the  Juliets  and  the  Di  Vernons,  not  only 
for  her  own  sake,  but  for  the  new-old  ideal  of  love  which  she 
inspires  in  the  hero.  It  needed  to  be  restated.  Felha7n 
and  Sartor  were  nearly  contemporaries.  The  first  was  a 
popular  success ;  the  other  a  failure.  But  contrast  the  two 
in  their  treatment  of  the  most  important  relationship  pos- 
sible between  men  and  women.  Felhain  conceives  of 
nothing  higher  than  the  conventional  clubman's  notion  of 
love.  In  its  course,  a  seduction  is  a  creditable  incident,  and 
its  natural  conclusion  is  a  fashionable  marriage,  with  settle- 
ments. Carlyle,  on  the  other  hand,  can  only  depict  the 
thing  he  knows,  the  intense  chivalrous  affection  of  the 
unworldly   man   who   has   retained   the   man's  natural    rev- 


xxxvi  INTRODUCTION. 

erence  for  the  woman.     Which  ideal  was  needed  most  in  the 
age  of  dandies  cannot  be  doubted. 

V. 

Wlien  Carlyle,  in  the  first  six  months  of  1831,  recast 
Sartor  into  its  final  shape,  he  was  known  to  the  world,  so 
far  as  he  was  known  at  all,  only  as  a  student  of  German 
literature.  He  had  translated  Goethe's  most  important 
novel,  he  had  published  a  life  of  Schiller.  He  had  made 
Richter,  Tieck,  Musaeus,  Hoffmann  more  than  mere  names 
to  the  English  public.  He  was  capable  of  appreciating  the 
Nibelu7igeiilied  and  of  attempting  to  interpret  the  second 
part  of  Faust.  He  had  even  a  history  of  German  literature 
in  hand,  and  a  life  of  Luther  in  contemplation.  No  man  in 
Great  Britain  possessed  such  accurate  historical  knowledge 
of  German  literature,  or  was  so  deeply  imbued  with  its 
spirit.  His  admiration  for  the  great  writers  of  Germany  was 
well  grounded,  and,  in  one  case  at  least,  reached  the  point  of 
enthusiasm.  For  him  Goethe  had  a  new  gospel.  That  his 
first  original  work,  then,  should  bear  many  traces  of  German 
influence  was  the  natural  result  of  his  long  continued  efforts 
to  transplant  German  thought  into  English  soil.  In  forming 
a  literary  judgment  of  Sartor,  one  thought  must  always  be 
kept  in  mind,  —  it  pretended  to  be  German. 

In  the  very  first  chapter,  the  reader  encounters  a  German 
professor  and  his  book.  The  name  of  the  book  is  given  in 
full  with  a  translation  appended.  Even  such  details  as  the 
name  of  the  publishers,  the  place  and  date  of  publication 
are  added,  but  they  are  discreetly  allowed  to  remain  undis- 
turbed in  the  original.  The  title,  Die  Kleider,  travesties 
that  of  an  actual  German  pamphlet  presented  by  Goethe  to 
Carlyle ;  but  it  does  not  give  its  name  to  the  book.  The 
quaint  Latin  rubric  which  Carlyle  pitched  upon  implies  that 


INTR  OD  UC  TION.  XXX  vii 

his  book  is  secondary,  derivative  and  based  upon  the  German 
treatise.  It  is  hardly  a  stretch  of  language  to  call  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  clothes-philosophy  "tailor,"  or  the  rehabilita- 
tion of  his  theories  by  the  ''  English  editor,"  ''  patching." 
But  the  title  is  not  quite  accurate.  The  first  and  third 
books  do  indeed  consist  ostensibly  of  extracts  from  Die 
Kleider,  with  introductions,  comments,  and  explanations  ; 
but  in  the  second  book,  as  has  been  already  noted,  the 
clothes-philosophy  gives  place  altogether  to  the  life  of  the 
clothes-philosopher.  Teufeldrockh's  epoch-making  work 
cannot  be  understood  without  more  information  regarding 
Teufelsdrockh  the  man.  The  friend  who  gives  the  informa- 
tion, in  the  famous  paper-bags,  is  Heuschrecke,  a  German 
Rath.  The  guardian  of  Teufelsdrockh  is  one  of  the  great 
Frederick's  sergeants  and  lives  in  the  village  of  Entepfuhl. 
This  hame  is  undoubtedly  German,  as,  in  its  elements,  is 
Hinterschlag,  the  ominous  designation  of  the  academy  where 
the  boy  is  educated.  He  passes  through  the  "  nameless  " 
university,  and  after  various  efforts  to  make  a  way  for  himself 
in  the  world,  falls  in  love  with  a  high-born  maiden  bearing  the 
German  name  of  Blumine.  It  is  upon  the  invitation,  which 
is  given  in  full,  of  a  Frau  Grafin  that  the  meeting  is  brought 
about.  When  the  lovers  part,  Teufelsdrockh  takes  up  his 
Pilgerstab  and  wanders  up  and  down  the  earth  like  the 
noble  Moringer  or  Rosegger's  Waldschulmeister  in  his 
stormy  youth.  But  besides  all  this  mere  veneer  of  German, 
Carlyle  goes  deeper.  The  scenes  in  the  Green  Goose 
Tavern  and  in  the  littered  study  of  the  watch-tower,  the 
portrait  of  Lieschen,  the  idyls  of  the  hero's  childhood  recall 
the  vanished  Germany  of  little  states  and  the  quaint  homely 
poetry  of  the  life  it  fostered. 

Again,  German  books,  with  all  their  undoubted  excel- 
lences, are  popularly  supposed  to  fail  not  seldom  in  lucid 
arrangement.      Carlyle,  who  should  give  no  countenance  to 


xxxviii  INTR  OD  UC  TION. 

such  an  idea,  goes  over  shamelessly  to  the  enemy.  In 
Sartor^  he  produces  ostensibly  a  double  confusion.  In 
most  vivid  phrases,  he  compares  the  original  Klcider  to 
"  some  mad  banquet,  wherein  all  courses  had  been  con- 
founded, and  fish  and  flesh,  soup  and  solid,  oyster-sauce, 
lettuces,  Rhine-wine  and  French  mustard  were  hurled  into 
one  huge  tureen."  With  the  life  of  Teufelsdrockh,  it  is  in- 
conceivably worse.  The  biographical  material  is  contained 
in  "  six  considerable  paper-bags,  carefully  sealed,  and 
marked  successively  in  gilt  China-ink,  with  symbols  of  the 
Six  Southern  Zodiacal  Signs,  beginning  at  Libra."  The 
contents  are  "  miscellaneous  masses  of  Sheets,  and  oftener 
Shreds  and  Snips,  written  in  Professor  Teufelsdrockh's 
scarce  legible  cursii^-scJwift ;  and  treating  of  all  imaginable 
things  under  the  Zodiac  and  above  it,  but  of  his  own  per- 
sonal history  only  at  rare  intervals,  and  then  in  the  most 
enigmatic  manner."  ^  This  chaos  the  English  editor  has  to 
reduce  to  order,  and  from  the  "Sheets"  and  ''Shreds"  he 
pieces  together  a  story,  meeting  with  about  the  same  success 
as  would  attend  the  effort  to  reconstruct  a  Chinese  puzzle 
with  half  the  parts  missing. 

A  little  reflection  shows  that  this  confusion  is  apparent 
rather  than  real.  Carlyle  does  not  want  to  be  tied  down  to 
any  rigid  plan  in  discussing  either  the  imaginary  Klcider  or 
the  life  of  its  imaginary  author.  He  wants  a  frame  for  his 
patchwork,  ample  enough  to  admit  any  scrap  of  an  idea  or 
any  fragment  from  his  most  intimate  experience  of  life. 
Commenting  upon  a  fictitious  philosophy  of  clothes,  and 
constructing  the  life  of  its  author,  furnish  exactly  the  oppor- 
tunities he  needs.  By  pretending  that  his  book  is  doubly 
confused,  he  forestalls  the  most  obvious  criticism  that  can 
be  made  on  it.  Further,  he  wins  the  reader  over  to  his  side. 
This  is  simply  the  ordinary  device  of  the  novelist  in  bring- 

1  Bk.  I,  cap.  iii. 


INTR  on  UC  TION.  xxxix 

ing  his  own  verse  into  his  tale.  The  rule  is  to  depreciate 
the  poetry  yourself,  or  make  your  puppets  run  it  down, 
depending  on  the  reaction  in  the  reader's  mind  to  set  the 
balance  true.  Carlyle  is  the  last  man  to  be  tangled  in  a 
yarn  of  his  own  spinning.  His  plans  are  invariably  clear  ; 
and  Sartor  is  no  exception  to  the  rule. 

The  problem  before  Carlyle  was  to  find  a  picturesque 
setting  for  the  thoughts  within  him  which  were  clamoring 
for  utterance.  He  knew  he  could  not  write  a  novel  ;  and 
verse  he  found  unmanageable.  No  essay  could  be  large 
enough  or  loose  enough  for.  his  purpose.  But  it  was  as  an 
essay  the  book  began.  Apparently  the  stages  of  its  growth 
are  these.  At  first  it  is  a  moment  of  inspiration,  "  astonish- 
ment at  the  thought  of  clothes";  then  it  is  an  essay  "on 
Clothes  prepared  as  a  paper  for  Fraser"";  then,  as  an  after- 
thought, the  clothes-philosophy  is  fathered  upon  an  unre- 
sisting German  professor  with  a  fantastic  name,  and  the 
"English  editor"  is  left  free  to  comment  upon  it  as  he 
pleases.  Last,  the  unfinished  novel,  Wotton  Reinfred,  is 
pressed  into  the  service  of  furnishing  "  more  biography." 

The  completed  Sartor  shQ^^s  Carlyle  the  artist.  After 
the  first  startling  discovery  that  a  learned  German  has  ex- 
pounded a  new  philosophy,  the  interest  of  the  reader  is 
excited  by  a  series  of  delicate  etchings  in  Carlyle's  best 
manner.  Teufelsdrockh,  the  grave,  the  silent,  toasting  the 
Cause  of  the  Poor  in  the  Green  Goose  Tavern,  or  in  his  attic 
alone  with  the  stars,  or  in  a  rhapsody  over  the  sleeping  city, 
may  well  entice  the  reader  on.  Various  short  chapters,  grave 
or  gay,  wise  or  humorous,  lead  up  to  the  hiatus  valdc  dejlendus^ 
the  impossibility  of  proceeding  without  more  knowledge  of 
the  author's  life.  This  very  check  is  intended  to  heighten 
the  intere'st.  Then  comes  the  "biograph)%a  synibolic 
Adumbration  significant  to  those  who  can  decipher  it,"  ^  in 
1  See  Carlyle's  Index,  p.  411. 


xl  INTRODUCTION. 

other  words,  Carlyle's  Wahrheit  iind Dichtwig,  his  Praeterita. 
Here  a  new  two-fold  interest  is  aroused  by  the  love  idyl  and 
the  tale  of  spiritual  struggle  the  strenuous  age  was  to  know 
so  well.  Here  is  no  shadowy,  unreal,  feigned  passion. 
Carlyle  is  writing  his  own  story,  and  he  writes  it  in  letters 
of  gold  and  blood.  It  is  hard  to  connect  Teufelsdrockh  the 
sage  with  Teufelsdrockh  the  perfervid  lover  and  desperate 
skeptic.  The  first  may  be  a  German,  the  latter  is  undoubt- 
edly a  North  Briton.  Let  us  be  thankful  for  both,  without 
trying  too  anxiously  to  reconcile  them.  But  even  with  the 
hero's  self-conquest  the  interest  is  not  exhausted.  Like 
Tell,  Carlyle  keeps  an  arrow  in  reserve.  The  third  book 
has  less  than  the  first  of  the  clothes-philosophy,  and  more  of 
Carlyle's  sanest,  grandest  deliverances  on  human  life,  such 
as  the  incomparable  chapter  on  Natural  Supernaturalism. 

Though  not  so  often  abused  as  the  style,  the  structure  of 
Sartor  has  not  escaped  criticism.  It  is  the  case  of  the  dog 
given  a  bad  name.  Carlyle  for  fun  says  his  book  is  a  jum- 
ble, and  most  people  take  him  at  his  word.  Indeed,  nothing 
is  more  noticeable  than  the  pride  with  which  the  ordinary 
reader,  following  the  vain  tradition  of  the  fathers,  parades 
his  helplessness  to  understand  Sartor.  In  reality,  Carlyle 
has  anticipated  every  objection  that  can  be  raised  to  the 
plan,  and  used  every  mechanic  art  employed  in  the  arrange- 

(fjnent  of  written    composition    to   make   his  purpose   clear. 

V  The  grand  divisions  are  distinctly  marked.  The  chapters 
/'S^  are  generally  short,  and  are  furnished  with  piquant  and 
descriptive  rubrics.  Almost  every  ostensible  extract  from 
Die  KIcider  is  tagged  with  the  plainest  of  labels.  Some- 
times the  supposed  quotation  is  abused  to  arouse  the  reader 
in  its  defense.  Again,  its  good  qualities  are  unblushingly 
pointed  out  ;  for  part  of  Carlyle's  whim  is  to  praise  himself. 
And  for  the  sake  of  the  wayfaring  man,  the  book  is  pro- 
vided   throughout     with     admirable     summaries.      Allowing 


vf 


INTR  OD  UC  TION.  xli 

Carlyle  the  privilege  of  speaking  in  his  natural  voice,  it  is 
hard  to  see  what  more  he  could  have  done  to  make  his 
words  plain  and  clear.  Given  the  man  and  his  thoughts, 
how  else  could  he  have  put  them  before  the  public  ?  Two 
modes  were  open  to  him,  the  reformatory  essay  and  the 
didactic  novel,  /^fnold  succeeded  with  the  one  and 
Kingsley  with  "£he  other.  Carlyle  knew  his  limitations  and 
still  tried  to  combine  the  two  methods.  Sartor  is  a  novel, 
—  with  appendixes,  fore  and  aft.  The  form  is  unique,  but 
it  is  capable  of  explanation  and  even  of  defense. 

In  pretending  to  be  based  on  a  specified  German  treatise, 
Sartor  began  life  as  a  literary  hoax.  The  first  intention  of 
its  author  was  humorous.  His  earliest  recorded  words  on 
the  subject  are  sufficiently  clear  :  "I  am  going  to  write  — 
Nonsense."  His  method  was  calculated  to  deceive  the  very 
elect.  He  constructs  a  German  book  and  evolves  a  German 
author  for  it.  He  gives  ample  quotations  from  the  one  and 
flows  with  reminiscences  of  the  other.  He  is  almost  as 
generous  with  matter-of-fact  detail  as  De  Foe,  and  almost  as 
unsmiling  as  Swift.  The  public,  ignorant  of  German,  were 
taken  off  their  guard.  They  held  a  vague  belief  that  the 
Germans  were  learned,  odd,  and  fantastical.  Sartor  asserted 
that  it  was  German,  it  was  apparently  learned,  it  was  cer- 
tainly odd  ;  and  so  it  was  taken  at  face  value.  At  least  one 
person  wrote,  on  seeing  it  quoted,  to  learn  where  Die  Kleider 
could  be  fallen  in  with  ;  the  heavy-handed  refutation  of  the 
North  American  reviewer  shows  that  he  had  been  haunted  by 
grave  doubts  ;  while  Mr.  Strachey  frankly  confesses  that  he 
himself  was  for  a  time  befooled.  Such  results,  of  course, 
were  only  possible  in  a  time  when  the  British  public  knew 
as  little  of  German  as  they  do  now  of  Hindustani.  That 
any  one  could  have  finished  the  first  chapter  of  Sartor  and 
not  seen  through  the  joke,  is  another  proof  that  "  with  fit 
apparatus"  the  public  is  always  "gullible." 


xlii  INTRODUCTION. 


VI. 


"  The  symmetrical  constructions  of  human  art  and  thought 
dispersed  and  upset,  are  piled  under  his  hands  into  a  vast 
mass  of  shapeless  ruins  from  the  top  of  which  he  fights  and 
gesticulates  like  a  conquering  savage."  This  vivid  gro- 
tesque, which  is  worthy  of  Carlyle  himself  and  would  have 
tickled  his  fancy,  represents  Taine's  impression  of  his  style. 
The  two  counts  in  the  indictment  are  :  Carlyle's  method  of 
writing  is  chaotic,  and  it  is  barbarous.  To  a  Frenchman 
born  to  a  classic  prose  as  lucid  as  his  native  air,  the  Scot's 
apparent  scorn  of  all  rule  and  precedent  may  well  seem 
Vandalic.  Still,  the  fact  that  a  foreign  critic  considers 
Carlyle's  style  objectionable,  does  not  necessarily  imply  a 
final  condemnation  of  that  style.  The  justice  of  his  strict- 
ures must  be  carefully  examined.  But  whether  Taine  is 
right  or  wrong,  whether  he  is  a  competent  judge  of  the 
matter  or  not,  the  fact  remains  that  he  finds  Carlyle's  style 
a  rock  of  offense,  an  opinion  which  is  shared  by  almost 
every  critic  and  criticaster. 

When  mention  is  made  of  Carlyle's  style,  it  is  not  the 
Lifi  of  Schiller  which  comes  to  mind,  nor  any  one  of  the 
essays.  The  style  recognized  to  be  distinctively  Carlyle's 
is  the  style  of  his  French  Revolution,  his  Latter-day  Pam- 
phlets, his  Frederick.  This  well-marked,  unmistakable  man- 
ner, the  real  Carlylese,  which  is  to  Taine  anathema,  appears 
first  full-blown  in  Sartor.  Before  this  book,  his  style  is  not 
distinctive  ;  after  it,  he  reverts  only  in  a  single  instance  to 
his  first  manner.-^  The  importance,  then,  of  investigating 
this  style  in  its  earliest  example  must  be  manifest.  What 
follows  is  not  intended  to  be  either  a  complete  defense  or  a 
complete  study  of  Carlyle's  style.      It  is  based  on  Sartor, 

^  Life  of  Sterling.     But  even  there  traces  of  Sartor  are  apparent. 


INTR  OD  UC  TION.  xl  i  i  i 

and  the  conclusions  reached  apply,  in  the  first  instance,  to 
that  book  alone.  Whether  or  not  they  may  be  of  wider 
application  can  only  be  shown  by  similar  investigations. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  Taine  had  said  the  worst  that 
could  be   said   of  Carlyle's   style  ;  but  other  objectors  run 
him    close.      Blackwood's   description    of    it,  "  a   barbarous,  | 
conceited,  uncouth,  and  mystical  dialect,"^  may  or  may  not  \0. 
be,  in   Carlyle's  own   word,  "  luminous."     Scherer  says  his  J 
style    becomes    pure    gibberish    and    the    Quartei'ly  Review 
echoes  this  verdict  without  dissent.^     The  notion  that  hts^ 
style  was  a  deliberate  affectation    has    long   prevailed  and 
dies  hard.     One  writer  even  feels  like  contradicting  Froude, 
who  asserts   that   Carlyle  wrote   as   he   spoke,  on  the  good 
ground  that   he,   the  particular  reviewer,  had  never  heard 
Carlyle   speak.      Other  critics   are    more  precise   and   insist 
that  Carlyle's  obscurity  is  due  to  corrupting  German  influ- 
ence,^ and   some   are   able   to   point   out  the  very  German 
writer  whose  style  he  imitated,  namely  Richter. 

Here  again  is  seen  the  force  of  the  bad  name  which  the 
sly  dog,  in  a  merry  mood,  gives  himself.  The  misconcep- 
tions of  the  critics  are  in  no  small  measure  due  to  Carlyle's 
comic  over-statement  of  his  own  peculiarities.  As  "  English 
editor  "  he  feels  himself  bound  to  take  Teufelsdrockh  to  task 
for  "  this  piebald,  entangled,  hyper-metaphorical  style  of 
writing,"^  abuse  almost  as  severe  as  old  Ebony'?.  He 
even  makes  more  specific  charges.  Teufelsdrockh's  style  is 
"  marred  by  the  same  crudeness,  inequality,  and  apparent 
want  of  intercourse  with  the  higher  classes.  .  .  .  On  the 
whole   Professor  Teufelsdrockh  is  not  a  cultivated  writer. 

1  Blackiaood^s  Edinburgh  Magazine,  1850,  p.  643. 

2  Quarterly  Review,  Jan.,  1885,  p.  92. 

3  The  trick  of  tearing  a  phrase  out  of  its  context  as  proof  of  Carlyle's 
obscurity  is  an  old  one.     See  Appendix,  p.  400. 

^Sartor,  266. 


xliv  INTRODUCTION. 

Of  his  sentences,  perhaps  not  more  than  nine-tenths  stand 
straight  on  their  legs  ;  the  remainder  are  in  quite  angular 
attitudes,  buttressed-up  by  props  (of  parentheses  and 
dashes),  and  ever  with  this  or  that  tag-rag  hanging  from 
them  ;  a  few  even  sprawl-out  helplessly  on  all  sides,  quite 
broken-backed  and  dismembered."  ^  Such  a  statement  is, 
of  course,  the  humorous  exaggeration  of  a  writer  who  is 
experimenting  upon  the  public  with  a  new  style.  Carlyle 
put  the  worst  face  on  the  matter,  and  again  his  critics 
meekly  follow  his  lead.  Nor  is  this  all.  In  his  proper 
capacity  as  English  editor,  he  has  a  confession  to  make  — 
of  undue  influence  on  the  part  of  that  dreadful  Teuton. 
"  Thus  has  not  the  Editor  himself,  working  over  Teufels- 
drockh's  German,  lost  much  of  his  English  purity  ? "  ^ 
How  Carlyle,  the  Scot,  must  have  chuckled  over  the  notion 
of  his  "  English  purity,"  at  a  time  when  Macaulay  was 
ready  to  exalt  the  Cockney  prentice  above  Scott  or  Robert- 
son, as  a  well  of  English  undefiled.  With  his  usual 
thoroughness,  Carlyle  aims  at  nothing  less  than  complete 
mystification.  In  pursuance  of  his  first  humorous  inten- 
tion, he  is  at  pains  to  give  a  German  coloring  to  his 
style.  He  lards  his  pages  with  scraps  of  German  which  he 
thoughtfully  translates,  or  slips  German  phrases  into  the 
text  in  brackets,  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith.  He  would 
not  be  suspected  of  abusing  our  confidence.  The  English 
and  the  German  are  placed  side  by  side  for  comparison  by 
the  intelligent.  He  further  imitates  such  German  idioms  as 
can  be  imitated;  for  instance,  the  insertion  of  an  adjectival 
phrase  between  the  noun  and  its  article.  Besides,  he  extends 
the  use  of  idioms  which  English  possesses  in  common  with 
German  but  does  not  use  so  freely,  such  as  the  adjective 
for  the  noun,^  and  "were  "  at  the  beginning  of  a  conditional 

1  Sartor,  26  f.  2  7/,/,/.^  266. 

3  "  Condition  of  the  German  Learned,"  5  2. 


INTRODUCTION.  xlv 

sentence.^  All  this  gave  the  book  an  odd  look  which  every- 
one was  ready  to  agree  was  quite  German.  In  view  of  this 
artfulness  on  the  part  of  Carlyle,  critics  must  not  be  blamed 
too  severely  for  accepting  with  childlike  trustfulness  his 
own  misstatement  of  the  case.  The  Sartorian  pitfalls  are 
many  and  ingenious  ;  and  one  after  another  the  critics 
blunder  into  them. 

The  further  charge  that  Carlyle  imitated  Richter  was 
made  early  and  it  has  often  been  repeated.  Thoreau  seems 
to  have  set  the  notion  going.  In  the  course  of  a  clear- 
sighted appreciation  of  Carlyle,  written  in  1847,  he  says  : 
"In  his  graphic  description  of  Richter's  style,  Carlyle 
describes  his  own  pretty  nearly ;  and  no  doubt  he  got  his 
own  tongue  loosened  at  that  fountain,  and  was  inspired 
by  it  to  equal  freedom  and  originality."^  The  quotation 
shows  that  Carlyle  and  Jean  Paul  undoubtedly  possessed 
certain  things  in  common, — an  untiring  faculty  of  rich 
allusion,  an  absolute  command  of  vivid  metaphor,  and  a 
turbulently  fresh  vocabulary.  Thoreau  makes  one  impor- 
tant reservation.  In  Carlyle,  ''the  proper  current  never 
sinks  out  of  sight  amid  the  boundless  uproar,"  as  it 
undoubtedly  does  in  Richter.  In  other  words,  Carlyle 
dominates  his  material ;  he  rides  on  his  whirlwind,  while 
Richter  is  smothered  under  his  roses.  Between  the  two 
there  is  a  vast  difference,  —  the  difference  between  the 
cloud  and  the  clear  sky.  How  Thoreau  arrived  at  his 
conclusion,  I  have  no  means  of  knowing.  He  may  have 
had  such  a  knowledge  of  German  as  would  enable  him  to 
compare  Jean  Paul  and  Carlyle  with  an  expert  eye  for 
nice  resemblance.  On  the  other  hand,  he  may  simply  have 
read  Carlyle's  translations  of  Richter,  and  his  admiring 
essays,  and  jumped  at  a  striking  analogy. 

1  "  Sheers  down,  were  it  furlongs  deep,"  26  5v 

"^Essays  and  Other  Writings  of  Henry  Thoreau,  p.  159,  London,  n.  d. 


xl  vi  J^  TR  OD  UC  TJON. 

Lowell  is  much  more  emphatic  :  "  In  '  Sartor,'  the  marked 
influence  of  Jean  Paul  is  undeniable  both  in  matter  and 
manner."  ^  He  thinks  also  that  the  humor  of  Swift,  Sterne, 
and  Fielding,  after  filtering  through  Richter,  ''reappears  in 
Carlyle  with  a  tinge  of  Germanism."  ^  If  this  means  that 
Carlyle  got  his  peculiar  humor  through  Richter,  Lowell  is 
simply  mistaken.  Carlyle  knew  his  Swift  and  his  Sterne  at 
first  hand  long  before  he  heard  of  Richter  or  knew  a  word 
of  German.  Besides,  since  this  was  written,  new  data,  inac- 
cessible to  Lowell,  have  been  published,  which  tend  to 
overset  his  theory  altogether.  It  is  true  that  Carlyle  bor- 
rows illustrations  from  Richter;^  but  this  is  a  different 
thing  from  consciously  modelling  his  style  on  Richter's, 
which  Lowell  seems  to  imply.  Blackuwod^  refers  confi- 
dently to  Richter  as  Carlyle's  model,  in  passing,  as  if  the 
matter  were  beyond  dispute.  The  idea  crops  out  again,  as 
late  as  1885  when  the  Qua^'terly,  reviewing  Froude's  Life^ 
couples  with  a  contradiction  of  Froude  the  statement  that 
Carlyle's  imitation  of  Richter  was  at  first  unconscious.^ 
Of  those  who  have  echoed  this  opinion,  how  many  have 
examined  or  tested  it,  or  have  possessed  fit  equipment  for 
making  the  necessary  comparison,  is  a  question  which  may 
be  deferred. 

On  the  other  hand,  individuals  temerarious  enough  to 
oppose  these  notions  have  not  been  wanting.  In  fact  the 
two  persons  best  qualified  to  speak  on  the  subject,  namely 
Carlyle  and  Carlyle's  most  intimate  friend,  declare  against 
this  strong  array  of  confident  assertions.  Froude  opines 
that  "no    criticism    could   be    worse    founded"^  than  that 

1  Lowell,  Essays,  II,  88,  Boston,  1892. 

^  Ibid.  ^  See  notes  32,  34,  diXid  passif7i. 

*  Blackwood'' s  Edinburgh  Magazine,  1850,  p.  658. 

5  Quarterly  Review,  Jan.,  1885.,  p.  92. 

6C  E.L.,  1,411. 


INTRODUCTION.  xlvii 

Carlyle's  style  was  imitative  of  Richter.  He  further  states 
with  great  plainness  that  Carlyle  often  told  him  that  his 
style  ''had  its  origin  in  his  father's  house  in  Annandale."^ 
In  another  place,  Carlyle  admits  the  influence  of  the  old 
Puritans  and  Elizabethans,  and  asserts  that  they  played  a 
"  much  more  important  part "  in  the  formation  of  his  style 
than  Jean  Paul  ;  "  and  the  most  important  by  far  was  that 
of  Nature."  Surely  Carlyle  ought  to  know  how  his  own 
style  was  formed.  Surely  his  positive  statements  must 
carry  greater  weight  than  the  mere  conjectures  of  the  most 
brilliant  critics.  How  much  of  the  "  old  Puritans  and 
Elizabethans,"  Shakspere  being  always  barred,  is  dis- 
cernible in  Sartor 'i  And  yet  the  influence  of  this  negli- 
gible quantity  was  "  greater  "  than  Richter's.  Carlyle  writes 
this  passage  at  a  very  sad  time,  when  he  is  more  anxious  to 
set  Irving  in  a  true  light  than  to  adjust  nicely  the  general 
public's  notions  about  his  own  methods  of  composition. 
He  enters  into  no  lengthened  discussion  of  the  matter,  but 
merely  jots  down  a  note  in  passing. 

Though  the  reference  is  slight,  it  is,  to  my  mind,  decisive. 
The  publication  of  Carlyle's  early  letters  has  brought  to 
light  most  important  material  for  the  study  of  his  style. 
His  memory  has  not  played  him  a  trick  when  he  says  that 
his  style  was  formed  in  the  old  Annandale  farm-house. 
The  documentary  evidence  in  support  of  this  statement  is 
ample  and  convincing.  Take  for  example  such  a  passage 
as  this  :  "  Nap^  the  mighty^  who  but  a  few  months  ago  made 
the  sovereigns  of  Europe  tremble  at  his  nod;  who  has 
trampled  on  thrones  and  sceptres  and  kings  and  priests  and 
principalities  and  powers,  and  carried  ruin  and  havoc  and 
blood  and  fire  from  Gibralter  to  Archangel  —  Nap,  the 
mighty  is —  Gone  to  Pot  !  !  ! 

iC.  E.  L.,  I,  411. 


xlviii  INTRODUCTION. 

" '  I  will  plant  my  eagles  on  the  towers  of  Lisbon.  I  will 
conquer  Europe  and  crush  Great  Britain  to  the  centre  of 
the  terraqueous  globe.'  I  will  go  to  Elba  and  be  cooped 
up  in  Limbo  ! !  !  But  yesterday,  and  Boney  might  have 
stood  against  the  world  ;  now  '  none  so  poor  to  do  him 
reverence.'  '  Strange,'  says  Sancho  Panza,  '  very  strange 
things  happen  in  the  boiling  of  an  o.gg.''  "^  This  is  not  an 
excerpt  from  the  Latter-day  Famp/ilcts,  but  a  bit  of  a  letter 
written  by  Carlyle  at  nineteen,  on  hearing  the  news  of 
Napoleon's  first  overthrow.  Not  for  six  years  was  he  to 
begin  the  study  of  German  or  so  much  as  know  that  Richter 
was  in  existence.  Still,  here  we  see  exactly  what  Thoreau 
saw  in  Carlyle's  style,  —  the  unconventional  vocabulary,  the 
free  construction,  and  the  wealth  of  allusion.  These  things, 
it  must  be  repeated,  Carlyle  has  in  common  with  Richter  ; 
but  in  no  sense  does  he  derive  them  from  the  German 
humorist.  The  passage  quoted  is  only  one  of  many  which 
miglit  be  cited  from  his  early  letters  and  which  display  the 
same  qualities.  The  Teufelsdrockhian  dialect  is,  to  my 
mind,  plainly  foreshadowed  in  the  nicknames  "^^ Boney, '^ 
"iV^/,  the  mighty,''  in  the  tags  from  the  Bible,  from  Shak- 
spere,  from  Don  Quixote,  in  the  burlesque  of  Napoleon's 
grandiloquence,  in  the  bold  use  of  the  slang  phrase  "gone 
to  pot,"  in  the  favorite  ''  Limbo,"  in  the  dashes  and  repeti- 
tion of  the  first  paragraph,  in  the  apparent  gap  in  sense 
between  the  last  two  sentences,  and  above  all  in  the  fresh 
phrasing  and  explosive  force  of  the  whole  passage.  This  is 
plainly  Carlyle's  habitual  method  of  expressing  himself. 
So  far  from  being  true  that  his  natural  voice  is  to  be  heard 
in  his  Life  of  Schiller,  and  only  strained,  affected  tones  in 
Sartor,  the  very  reverse  is  the  case.  When  he  imitates  the 
popular  literary  fashions  in  JVotton  Reinfred,  or  in  his  hack 
articles  for  Brewster,  he  writes  in  manacles.     When  he  is 

1 E.  Lett.,  2. 


INTR  OD  UC  TION.  xlix 

carried  on  by  the  impetuous  flow  of  his  thoughts  in  Sartor^ 
the  book  writes  itself.  The  difference  is  marked  even  in 
his  early  letters.  To  his  intimates  he  writes  in  this  free 
strain.  In  addressing  a  mere  acquaintance  he  becomes  a 
Scotch  polite  letter-writer.^ 

Superficial  resemblances  between  Carlyle  and  Richter 
undoubtedly  exist,  but  too  much  has  been  made  of  them. 
It  is  high  time  to  call  attention  to  their  points  of  difference. 
Thoreau  lays  his  finger  on  the  main  distinction,  the  radical 
distinction  between  the  essentially  clear  course  of  Carlyle's 
sentences  and  Richter's  endless  meanderings.  From  Rich- 
ter's  incurable  vice  of  the  parenthesis  Carlyle  is  free. 
There  is  nothing  in  Sartor  to  compare  with  the  ''  Zwischen- 
satze  und  Zwischengedanken  "  of  the  Kampaner  T/ml,  for 
example.  Again,  Richter's  characteristic  note  is  tender, 
and  at  times  sentimental  ;  Carlyle's  is  stern,  strenuous. 
Even  in  his  tenderest  passages,  he  feels  a  self-imposed 
curb.  In  Richter  the  note  is  too  often  forced,  in  Carlyle 
it  is  felt  to  be  almost  always  inevitable.  Besides  all  these 
there  are  the  differences  between  English  prose  and  German 
prose.  Carlyle  has  the  advantage  of  a  sentence-structure 
which  is  logical.  He  loosens  the  English  sentence,  frees  it 
from  the  trammels  of  the  Johnsonian  tradition,  and  gives  it  a 
liveliness  almost  colloquial.  Richter  is  also  of  the  romantic 
school  and  would  gladly  defy  the  Median  laws  of  the  Ger- 
man sentence.  But  they  are  too  strong  for  him.  No  single 
rebel  can  hope  to  abate  the  tyranny  of  the  past  participles 
and  relative  clauses.  Richter's  expedient  of  suppling  the 
German  order  by  the  introduction  of  parentheses,  and 
parentheses  within  parentheses,  only  made  matters  worse. 
To  the  unavoidable  rigidity  of  German  prose  he  joins  a 
heavy  formlessness   of   interjected   clauses.     On   the   other 

1  Contrast,  for  instance,  the  letters  to  Mitchell  with  No.  24  to 
T.  Murray,  E.  Lett.,  -jZ. 


1  INTR  OD  UC  TION. 

hand,  Carlyle's  style,  in  Sartor  at  least,  is  free  and  fluid, — 
it  may  be  as  of  clear  stream,  or  of  mountain  torrent,  or  of 
burning  lava. 

These  misconceptions  may  then  finally  be  laid  to  rest, 
('arlyle  neither  imitates  Richter  nor  forms  his  style  upon 
iiim.  To  call  his  style  German  is  simply  misuse  of  words. 
As  seen  in  Sartor^  it  is  a  natural  development  of  fashions 
of  thought  and  speech  learned  under  his  father's  roof  and 
plainly  traceable  in  his  earliest  writings.  Leaving  the  dis- 
cussion of  what  his  style  is  not,  let  us  now  examine  what 
it  is. 

It  is  generally  conceded  that  the  prose  of  Addison,  of 
Swift,  and  of  Goldsmith  is  still  unsurpassed  in  the  essential 
qualities  of  good  prose,  that  is,  in  clearness,  force,  and  ease. 
Later  writers  have  tried  to  enlarge  the  scope  of  classical 
prose  by  interfusing  it  with  richer  color,  and  with  subtler 
and  more  varied  harmonies.  But  for  all  that,  the  prose  of 
the  eighteenth  century  remains  our  classical  prose,  the 
model  for  succeeding  generations  of  writers.  Such  a  master 
of  style  as  Arnold  stands  out  for  the  old  tradition.  The 
difference  between  the  prose  of  Swift  and  the  prose  of 
Ruskin  or  DeQuincey  is  striking.  The  first  is  intended  to 
be  read,  it  is  free  from  mannerisms,  it  addresses  itself 
chiefly  to  the  eye.  The  latter  gains  by  being  read  aloud,  it 
appeals  to  the  ear,  and  it  is  so  full  of  mannerisms  that  it 
can  be  readily  imitated  and  caricatured.  No  one  can 
caricature  Swift  or  Addison.  Modern  or  romantic  prose 
is  surcharged  with  color,  with  emotion,  and  it  aims  at 
rhythms  undreamt  of  in  the  eighteenth  century.  These 
qualities  of  composition  we  look  for,  not  in  prose  but  in 
TJoetry,  In  prose  we  have  a  right  to  expect,  first  and  fore- 
(most,  intellectual  qualities,  not  emotional.  The  best  part 
)  of  prose  is  that  "  vivid  exactness"  of  phrase  and  that  lucid 
order  of  the  whole,  which  are  due  to  the  exercise  of  logic. 


INTRODUCTION.  H 

\ 

Now    Carlyle    goes    a    step    beyond   both   DeQuincey    and 

Ruskin,  and  addresses  himself  ahnost  exclusively  to  the 
ear.  Beside  Carlyle's  all  other  styles  seem  tame.  At  times 
his  words  seem  to  shout  at  you  from  the  printed  page. 
There  is  hardly  a  sentence  which  does  not  produce  the 
illusion  of  an  audible  voice  full  of  mirth,  or  scorn,  or  ten- 
derness, or  melancholy,  or  entreaty.  Often  a  passage 
which  seems  hard  to  the  eye,  yields  up  its  meaning  when 
read  aloud.  In  this  new  prose  the  writer  comes  much 
closer  to  the  reader  than  in  the  classical  prose,  which 
considers  it  good  breeding  to  suppress  the  personal  note 
altogether.  But  this  style  is  not  oratorical.  It  is  too  close- 
knit,  too  free  from  the  hint  of  insincerity,  the  necessary 
verbiage  and  the  diffuseness  of  persuasive  speech  to  be 
classed  for  a  moment  with  Burke's.  Every_sentence__is^  as 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  says  "  alive  to  the  finger-tips."  There  ^ 
is  an  evident  desire  to  be  always  emphatic,  and  no  doubt 
Mr.  Stephen  is  correct  in  ascribing  this  to  Carlyle's  strong 
feelings,  his  great  intellectual  power,  his  hatred  of  the  con- 
ventional, and  his  peculiar  irritability  of  nerve.  Later,  I 
shall  advert  again  to  this  vividness  of  style  and  this  union 
of  concentration  with  declamatory  effect,  which  is  still  not 
oratorical. 

Froude  calls  Carlyle's  style  "  the  clearest  of  styles."  ^  "" 
This  is^THardT  saying,  unless  by  clear  he  means  structurally 
clear,  or  else  vivid.  Otherwise  the  judgment  cannot  pass 
unchallenged.  Between  the  reader  and  Carlyle's  meaning^ 
there  always  hangs  a  veil,  which  grows  transparent  in  the 
exact  degree  that  he  understands  Carlyle's  manifold  and 
out-of-the-way  allusions.     To  my  mind  this  is  the  chief  and 

1  Thoreau  had  done  so  long  before.  "  Not  one  obscure  line,  or  half 
line,  did  he  ever  write.  His  meaning  lies  plain  as  the  daylight,  and  he 
who  runs  may  read."  Essays  and  Other  IVi-itings  of  Henry  Thoreau,  p. 
154. 


O 


^1 


lii  INTRODUCTION. 

perhaps  the  only  real  difficulty  in  understanding  Carlyle. 
His  own  comic  self-depreciation  may  be  set  aside.  It  is 
/not  because  his  mind  is  too  weak  to  construct  intelligible 
jsentences  ;  it  is  not  because  those  sentences  are  "  broken- 
' backed"  or '' dismembered  "  ;  but  because  they  are  full  of 
references  to  all  things  visible  and  invisible,  that  they  are 
sometimes  hard  to  understand.  The  range  of  his  allusions 
is  immens_e..  Apparently  he  never  forgot  anything  he  ever 
read  or  anything  he  ever  saw.  All  literature  lies  open 
before  him  from  which  to  choose  his  illustrations.  He 
passes  from  Aristotle  to  Peter  -Pindar,  from  Goethe  to  a 
local  almanac  Here  is  an  astronomical  fact  jostling  a 
scrap  of  a  song  in  praise  of  tobacco  ;  there,  a  bit  from  the 
Aiiato77iy  of  Melmicholy  alongside  a  reference  to  the  dress  of 
the  South  American  guacho.  Only  two  English  writers 
approach  him  in  wealth  of  remote  allusion,  —  Macaulay  and 
Mr.  Swinburne.  When  the  allusion  is  understood  the 
cloudy  veil  becomes  fire,  a  great  and  shining  light.  Take, 
for  example,  a  typical  passage  chosen  almost  at  random,  — 
the  closing  paragraph  of  the  second  chapter  of  Sartor. 
Within  that  space  are  six  allusions,  —  to  Horace,  to  Pope, 
to  Tristram  Shandy,  to  the  Bible,  to  an  English  trade  habit, 
to  an  obscure  Chinese  custom.^  To  the  obvious  meaning 
of  the  text  these  allusions  superadd  a  fine  literary  flavor, 
on  which  half  its  effect  depends.  The  meaning  is  tolerably 
clear  without  them  ;  but  until  we  understand  these  allusions 
as  Carlyle  did,  we  cannot  read  the  passage  as  he  intended 
us  to  read  it.  Indeed,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  a  right 
appreciation  of  it  is  impossible  without  a  knowledge  of  the 
waggish  turn  which  he  gives  to  the  solemn  Latin  adage. 
Until  we  know  that  Mr.  Shandy  made  a  similarly  free  trans- 
lation of  it,  to  justify  the  exposure  of  his  grand-aunt  Dinah's 
peccadillo,  we  miss  the  author's  meaning.     The  practice,  it 

1  See  Notes,  pp.  2S5  f. 


INTRODUCTION.  Jiij 

must  be  confessed,  smacks  of  the  schoolmaster  ;  it  is  always 
more  or  less  pedantic.  In  justification  of  Carlyle,  however, 
the  fact  is  clear  that  it  is  the  result  of  a  habit  of  mind,  which 
grew  with  his  growth  and  tinged  the  very  earliest  specimens 
of  his  style.  His  letters  to  his  college  friends  are  crammed 
with  allusions  to  his  reading  and  with  quotations  from 
Milton,  Horace,  Voltaire,  etc.,  till  one  of  his  correspond- 
ents is  driven  to  remonstrate.^  All  through,  the  influence 
of  his  early  training  is  clearly  traceable.  As  a  Scotch  Pres- 
byterian he  kno\V^  his  Bible  thoroughly.  Many  passages 
of  Sartor  are  simply  mosaics  of  familiar  texts.  As  a  stu- 
dent of  Mathematics  he  can  speak  confidently  of  Lagrange 
and  Laplace.  He  is  at  Edinburgh  when  French  philosophy 
is  influential,  and  knows  his  D'Alembert  and  Voltaire. 
He  learns  to  read  German,  he  translates  German  literature 
and  writes  essays  upon  it,  and  can  therefore  refer,  without 
fear  of  making  a  slip,  to  Hugo  of  Trimberg  and  the  Hoard 
of  the  Nibelungs.  He  has  explored  the  deeps  and  shallows 
of  English  literature,  and  when  he  casts  his  drag-net  into 
that  wide  sea,  no  one  need  be  surprised  at  anything  he 
brings  to  light.  As  a  bookman  by  nature,  circumstances, 
and  his  own  mature  decision,  his  allusions  are  in  the  main, 
bookish.  Knowledge  of  them  is  the  price  he  demands  for 
the  right  of  entry  into  the  treasure-house  of  his  thought. 
As  a  professed  Carlylean,  I,  for  one,  cannot  think  it  too 
much. 

"The  clearest  of  styles,"  "every  sentence  alive  to  its 
finger-tips "  are  phrases  now  easier  to  understand.  This 
clearness,  or  rather  vividness,  this  impression  of  abounding 
life  will  be  found  on  examination  to  be  largely  due  to  the 
quality  which  the  Germans  call  A7ischaulichkeit.  Carlyle 
loved  the  concrete  fact  with  passionate  devotion.  What- 
ever was  strongly  marked,  individual,  characteristic  in  a 
1  E.  Lett.,  1 8,  n. 


liv  INTRODUCTION. 

'  scene  or  a  man  or  a  story  fascinated  him.  Besides,  he 
possessed  the  vigorous  constructive  imagination  which, 
being  accorded  the  concrete  fact,  builds  upon  it  with  uner- 
iring  truth.  That  is,  Carlyle's  mental  vision  is  so  keen,  and 
his  sympathies  so  strong  that  he  realizes  in  its  sharpest 
outline,  in  its  most  minute  detail,  in  its  exact  gradation  of 
color,  the  fact  which  is  to  duller  eyes  a  mere  blur,  and  sets 
it  before  the  reader  in  its  very  form  and  pressure.     Meta- 

rPphors,  then,  are  his  natural  language.  With  him  there  is 
^  I    no  question  of  evolving  the  thought  and  then  dressing  it  up 

I  in  some  fitting  garb  of  metaphor.  The  thought  and  the 
image   are   one.     For   example,   he   wishes   to  tell   us    that 

,     Professor  Teufelsdrockh's   method  of    arriving  at   truth   is 

I  not  by  a  catena  of  syllogisms.  The  thought  presents  itself 
to  him  as  a  picture  from  some  children's  game.  "  Our 
Professor's  method  is  not,  in  any  case,  that  of  common 
school  Logic,  where  the  truths  all  stand  in  a  row,  each  hold- 
ing by  the  skirts  of  the  others  ^  Or,  again,  he  wishes  to  have 
his  audience  realize  the  expression  of  a  face.  Teufels- 
drockh's look  is  grave,  but  grave  in  a  certain  way.  After 
telling  us  what  it  is  not,  he  compares  it  to  the  gravity  of 
*'  some  silent,  high-encircled  mountain-pool."  Then  one 
image  calls  forth  another  until  the  tissue  of  impressive 
pictures  forms  one  consistent  and  illuminating  whole.  The 
"  mountain-pool "  may  be  "  perhaps  the  crater  of  an  extinct 
volcano ;  into  whose  black  deeps  you  fear  to  gaze  ;  those 
eyes,  those  lights  that  sparkle  in  it,  may  indeed  be  reflexes 
of  the  heavenly  Stars,  but  perhaps  also  glances  from  the 
region  of  Nether  Fire."  '^  I  When  it  is  not  a  question  of 
giving  form  and  substance  to  abstractions,  but  of  making 
transcripts  from  nature,  Carlyle  is  unapproachable.  Every 
dash  of  color,  every  sweeping  line  shows  the  artist's  eye  and 

'^  Sartor, /^l.  "^  Ibid.,  22>. 


INTRO  D  UC  TION.  Iv 

the  artist's  hand.  Who  can  forget  the  old  sergeant's  cot-  ■ 
tage  with  "  flowers  struggling  in  through  the  very  windows," 
or  the  swallows  "  from  far  Africa,"  or  the  child  on  the 
orchard-wall  facing  the  sunset,  or  the  "  ruddy  morning  "  of 
his  first  day  at  school,  or  the  hundred  other  vignettes  which 
brighten  Sartor's  pages  ?  The  same  desire  for  the  concrete 
is  seen  in  his  habit  of  making  proper  nouns  plural  ;  for 
example,  ''  English  National  Debts,"  "  Frankfort  Corona- 
tions," "  Sloughs  of  Despair  and  steep  Pisgah  hills."  "  Such 
burdens  as  the  English  national  debt,"  "  ceremonies  as  gor- 
geous as  the  coronation  of  the  emperor  Joseph  at  Frank- 
fort," would  not  have  a  tithe  of  the  force  or  fire  of  these 
pregnant  condensations.  No  small  part  of  Carlyle's  effect 
lies  in  this  higher  kind  of  picture-writing.  If  he  be  denied  >  vy 
his  similes  and  metaphors  in  all  their  varieties,  his  occupa- 
tion is  gone. 

These  three  thino-s,  then,  seem  to  be  the  most  marked 

-7- 

characteristics  of  his  style,  —  the  constant  impression  of  an    y  ^ 
audible  voice,  the  wealth  of  allusion,  and  love  of  the  con- 
cretely picturesque.     In  a  much  lower  rank  I  would  place 
his   humor,    as    distinguishing   the    style    of    Sartor.      The  ~] 
essence  of  it  consists  in  a  juxtaposition  of  the  remote  and 
the    incongruous  with    the   result   of    awakening    a    feeling 
of  amusement  or  of    scorn  or  of    sadness.     For   example, 
"Witness  your  Pyrrhus  conquering  the  world,  yet  drinking 
no  better  red  wine  than  he  did  before  !     Alas  !  witness  also    j 
your  Diogenes,  flame-clad,  scaling  the  upper  Heaven  and 
verging   toward    Insanity  for  the    prize    of    a  '  high-souled 
Brunette,'  as  if  the  Earth  held  but  one  and  not  several  of 
these !  "^    Or  again,  man,  as  a  "  tool-using  animal  "  fashions 
''Liverpool    steam-carriages"   and   "the   British   House    of     /   - 
Commons."      There    is    no    connection    between    the    two    L^ 

1  See  p.  13  6. 


i  vi  INTR  OD  UC  T/ON. 

'except  in  Carlyle's  thought.  To  class  them  as  tools  with 
[the  "first  wooden  Dibble"  is  grotesquely  humorous.  But 
Carlyle  is  not  satisfied  with  the  amusement  he  has  awakened. 
With  the  trick  of  Hamlet  he  turns  the  jest  into  sadness. 
Man,  the  maker  of  tools,  "  digs  up  certain  black  stones 
from  the  bosom  of  the  Earth  and  says  to  them,  Transport 
??ie  and  7?iy  luggage  at  the  rate  of  six-and-thirty  miles  an  hour ; 
and  they  do  it ;  he  collects,  apparently  by  lot,  six  hundred 
and  thirty-eight  miscellaneous  individuals,  and  says  to  them. 
Make  this  fiation  toil  for  ns,  bleed  for  us,  hunger,  and  sorroiv, 
and  sin  for  us ;  and  they  do  it."  In  this  sort  of  writing,  a 
taint  of  the  coarse  and  the  sensual  seems  unavoidable,  and 
from  coarseness  Carlyle  is  not  altogether  free.  Here  and 
there  in  Sartor  are  touches  of  peasant  frankness  of  speech 
and  thought,  which  more  conventional  minds  regard  as  indeli- 
cate. Carlyle  was  disgusted  with  the  "  gentlemen's  stories  " 
he  heard  at  London  supper  parties  where  the  punch  was 
strong,  and  yet  he  delights  in  his  Rabelaisian  epitaph  on 
Count  Zahdarm.  Some  of  his  fooling  does  not  seem  at  all 
admirable;  for  instance,  in  the  chapter  on  tailors.  The 
unwieldy  elephant  uses  all  his  might  to  make  us  mirth, 
but  he  wreathes  his  lithe  proboscis  in  vain.  We  are  not 
amused  unless  we  resemble  the  essayist  who  selected  his 
picture  of  the  horrors  of  war  in  the  ''  Dumdrudge  "  passage 
as  an  example  of  humor. 

The  minor  structural  peculiarities  of  the  Carlylean  sen- 
tence in  Sa?'tor  may  be  rapidly  passed  over.  The  chief  of 
these  is  a  very  free  use  of  the  triad,  or  grouping  of  words  in 
threes,  a  peculiarity  which  is  to  be  found  in  literature  from 
the  Homeric  hymns  to  Cardinal  Newman.  Apparently  such 
a  collocation  satisfies  some  universal  instinct  for  rhythm  or 
symmetry.  In  its  simplest  form  it  consists  of  three  adjec- 
tives.   Aphrodite's  necklets,  for  example,  are  KaXot,  ^p^'o-eiot. 


INTR  OD  UC  TION.  1  vii 

tra^moUikQi}  "  It  was  indeed  an  old,  decayed,  and  moribund 
world  into  whicli  Christianity  had  been  cast."  ^  Carlyle 
shows  an  extraordinary  fondness  for  this  trick  of  style. 
There  is  hardly  a  page  without  an  example  of  it  ;  for 
instance,  "  Every  cellular,  vascular,  muscular  tissue."  ^  Or 
instead  of  adjectives  it  may  be  a  group  of  three  nouns  : 
''  Every  .  .  .  Tissue  glories  in  its  Lawrences,  Magendies, 
Bichats."'^  Or  again,  it  may  be  three  noun  phrases;  for 
example,  ''  Our  disquisitions  on  the  Social  Contract,  on  the 
Standard  of  Taste,  on  the  Migrations  of  the  Herring?"^ 
The  phrases  may  be  absolute  :  "  Tears  streaming  down 
his  cheeks,  pipe  held  aloft,  foot  clutched  into  the  air.""' 
Or  again,  this  triplicity  may  consist  of  three  verbs :  "  Riot 
cries  aloud,  and  staggers  and  swaggers  in  his  rank  dens  of 
shame."  ^  Or  again,  the  group  of  three  may  be  three 
symmetrical  sentences  ;  for  example,  "  Men  are  dying  there, 
men  are  being  born,  men  are  praying."^  These  may  also 
occur  in  combination  and  with  certain  modifications,  so  as 
to  affect  the  construction  of  an  entire  passage.^ 

1  Hymns,  III,  89. 

2  J.  H.  Newman,  Historical  Sketches,  II,  374,  London,  1S91.  Other 
examples  are  not  hard  to  find :  "  Yet  we  did  esteem  him  stricken, 
smitten  of  God,  and  afflicted  "  {Isa.  liii,  4)  ;  "  Go  to  the  ant  .  .  .  which 
having  no  guide,  overseer  or  ruler"  {Prov.  vi,  7)  ;  "Con  cagne  magre, 
studiose  e  conte"  {Inferno,  xxxiii,  31).  Cp.  the  inscription  over  Hell- 
gate,  cant,  iii,  for  triplicate  structure.  "  Wie  si  ziige  einen  valken  V 
stare,  sccen',  und  \y\\d&''  {A^ibehtJigenlied,  Av.  I,  st.  13).  In  Latin, 
the  Horatian  '  totus  teres  atque  rotundus '  will  readily  occur  to  one. 
Goethe  and  Heine  are  very  fond  of  this  construction ;  for  example, 
"  Im  Ganzen,  Guten,  Schonen  Resolut  zu  leben,"  "  Du  bist  wie  eine 
Blume,  So  hold  und  schon  und  rein."  The  principle  seems  to  be  "  Alle 
gute  Dinge  sind  drei." 

^Sartor,  2.  ^  Il>id.  '  H'id..,  19. 

4  Ibid.  6  n>id.,  28.  8  n>hi.,  18. 

^  See  Sartor,  35  19,  102  18,  and  notably  135  8,  where  the  author  is 
conscious  of  the  construction. 


Iviii  INTRODUCTION. 

In  the  matter  of  the  capitals  with  which  his  pages  are 
studded,  Carlyle  reverts  to  the  early  custom  of  indicating 
^the  important  word  by  this  device,  which  the  Germans  still 
hi  part  retain.  There  are  comparatively  few  neologies. to  be 
found,  but  very  many  compound  words.  Of  these  a  very 
large  number  are  adverbs  joined  to  verbs,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  German  inseparable  prefix.  The  hyphen  gives  the 
verb  a  new  shade  of  meaning  by  joining^©  it  the  idea  of 
the  adverb  ;  for  instance,  "  sprawl-out "  is  not  the  same  as 
"  sprawl  out."  The  reader  is  conscious  of  the  same  shift  of 
accent  to  the  verbal  part  of  the  compound  as  in  German. 
Another  mannerism  is  the  occurrence  of  jingling  words  in 
IIT  pairs,  which  are  nearly  always  alliterative  and  sometimes 
t  rhyme;  for  example,  "lucid  and  lucent,"  "habitable  and 
habilable,"  "  booby  and  bustard,"  "  clothwebs  and  cobwebs," 
"fluid  and  florid,"  "staggers  and  swaggers,"  "right  and 
tight."  Another  mannerism  which  may  puzzle  the  reader 
j£^;  is  his  habit  of  quoting  from  himself.  Phrases  cut  off  by 
inverted  commas  are  sprinkled  thickly  through  Sartor. 
These  seem  to  be  from  authors  which  ought  to  be  well 
known,  until  closer  inspection  reveals  the  quotation  im- 
bedded in  the  text  a  few  lines  or  a  few  pages  before.  Not 
infrequently  the  puzzle  is  made  harder  by  the  length  of  the 
interval  between  the  two  occurrences  or  by  the  way  Carlyle 
modifies  the  passage  he  quotes.  Such  are  Carlyle's  chief 
mannerisms  as  seen  in  Sartor. 

If,  then,  the  foregoing  train  of  reasoning  be  sound  and 
based  on  facts  which  may  be  verified,  the  following  conclu- 
sions may  be  regarded  as  established.  Sartor  presents  the 
first  example  of  Carlyle's  fully  developed  and  characteristic 
style.  That  style  is  not  imitative  of  Richter,  or  of  German 
at  all ;  but  it  is  an  independent  development  of  tendencies 
apparent  in  Carlyle's  earliest  writings.  Declamatory, 
approaching  the  effect  of  speech,  it  still  avoids  the  diffuse- 


INTR  on  UC  TION.  Ux 

ness  of  oratory.  It  has  the  concentration  of  a  Hebrew 
prophecy.  If  the  blind  of  German  be  set  aside,  and  the 
misconceptions  due  to  it,  the  style  is  seen  to  be  extraor- 
dinarily vivid.  A  very  large  part  of  this  vividness,  or 
Anschaiclickkeif,  depends  on  Carlyle's  love  of  the  concretely 
picturesque,  combined  with  his  great  natural  command  of 
metaphor.  Apart  from  the  veil  of  allusion,  such  a  style 
requires  no  special  illumination  to  make  it  clear. 

Now  such  a  style  is  not  that  of  a  prose  writer,  but  of  a 
poet.  It  is  in  poetry  that  we  look  for  the  personal  rather 
than  the  impersonal  note  ;  for  the  ornate  rather  than  the 
simple  presentation  of  ideas ;  and,  in  the  last  place,  for  the 
appeal  to  the  emotions  rather  than  to  the  reason.  But 
Sartor  is  not,  in  Tennyson's  word,  "  measured  language." 
The  accident  of  verse  is  wanting.  It  is  therefore  necessary 
to  make  a  new  category  under  which  to  range  Carlyle,^ 
and  the  term '' prose-poet "  has  been  devised.  A  prose- 
poet,  I  take  it,  is  one  using  prose  to  convey  ideas  usually 
set  out  in  verse,  and  employing  for  this  purpose  a  style 
surcharged  with  feeling,  harmony,  and  color.  Ruskin,  in 
his  lyrical  perorations,  DeQuincey,  in  parts  of  The  Eng- 
lish Mail-coach^  are  prose-poets.  In  Sai'tor  this  style  is 
sustained  almost  from  first  to  last ;  in  the  French  Revolution 
I  should  say  it  was  completely  sustained.  The  style  is  by 
turns  tender,  indignant,  grotesque,  idyllic,  scornful,  majestic, 
but  always  after  the  manner  of  poetry,  not  after  the  manner 
of  prose.  This  is,  of  course,  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
bastard  blank  verse  which  Dickens  wrote  occasionally,  and 

1 "  A  born  poet  only  wanting  perhaps  a  clearer  feeling  for  form." 
J.  Morley,  Critical  Miscellanies,  I,  149,  London,  1888.  "Two  or  three 
masterpieces  of  the  Annandale  peasant-poet."  F.  Harrison,  The  Forum, 
p.  550,  Aug.,  1894.  J.  C.  Shairp  classes  Cariyle  and  Newman  as  prose- 
poets.  Aspects  of  Poetry,  Oxford,  1881.  "The  greatest  of  the  prose- 
poets  of  England."     J.  Nichol,  Thomas  Cariyle,  190,  N.  Y.,  1892. 


Ix  INTRODUCTION. 

its  power  is  unquestioned.  Whether  it  is  legitimate  or 
wholly  admirable  may  be  still  an  open  question.  To  ven- 
ture a  personal  opinion,  I  should  say  that  any  one  with  the 
justification  of  Carlyle's  ever-burning  anger  at  folly  and 
wrong,  his  moral  earnestness,  his  "  fancies  chaste  and 
noble  "  has  a  warrant  to  write  in  Carlylese. 


VII. 

Carlyle  is,  then,  a  prose-poet,  and  Sartor  is  a  prose-poem. 
Its  place  in  our  literature  is  unique,  and  is  likely  to  remain 
so.  In  sixty  years  the  popular  estimate  of  the  book  has 
undergone  a  complete  revolution.  Fraser  offered  to  publish 
it,  if  Carlyle  would  pay  him  £\^o.  When  it  did  appear,  it 
was  received  with  indifference  or  curses.  Just  before 
Carlyle's  death,  a  cheap  edition  of  30,000  copies  was  printed 
and  sold  in  a  few  weeks.  It  is  now,  undoubtedly,  the 
favorite  of  all  his  works  and  the  most  frequently  quoted. 
The  wheel  has  come  full  circle.  The  world  has  more  than 
confirmed  the  verdict  of  Carlyle's  first  and  best  critic  ;  and 
now  all  opinions  worth  regarding  are  simply  variations  of 
the  theme  "  It  is  a  work  of  genius,  dear."  Professor 
Nichol  thinks  that  if  the  most  suggestive  passages  be 
scored,  the  book:  will  be  disfigured  from  cover  to  cover. 
Mr.  Lecky  considers  it  one  of  the  most  influential  and 
popular  books  published  in  the  second  half  of  the  century. 
"  The  most  original,  the  most  characteristic,  the  deepest, 
and  the  most  lyrical  of  his  productions  "  is  the  opinion  of 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison.  "There  are  .  .  .  passages  in 
Sartor  Resartus  .  .  .  which  have  long  appeared  to  me  to 
be  the  sublimest  poetry  of  the  age,"  says  the  vivacious 
author  of  Obiter  Dicta.  Dr.  Garnett,  perhaps,  goes  farther 
than  any  one.       He  will  hardly  allow  it  to  be  studied   as 


INTRODUCTION.  Ixi 

mere  literature  any  more  than  Holy  Writ.  "  It  will  be  read 
as  a  gospel  or  not  at  all." 

The  import  of  the  book  to  two  different  classes  of  readers 
is  perhaps  best  illustrated  by  Huxley's  account  of  the 
impression  it  made  upon  himself  and  the  friend  with  whom 
he  was  so  long  associated.  "  At  that  time  Tyndall  and  I 
had  long  been  zealous  students  of  Carlyle's  works.  Sartor 
Resartus  and  the  Miscellanies  were  among  the  few  books 
devoured,  partly  by  myself  and  partly  by  the  mighty  hordes 
of  cockroaches,  during  the  cruise  of  the  Rattlesnake ;  and 
my  sense  of  obligation  to  the  author  was  then,  as  it  remains, 
extremely  strong.  Tyndall's  appreciation  of  the  seer  of 
Chelsea  was  even  more  enthusiastic  ;  and  in  after  years 
assumed  a  character  of  almost  filial  devotion.  The  grounds 
of  our  appreciation,  however,  were  not  exactly  the  same. 
My  friend,  I  think,  was  disposed  to  regard  Carlyle  as  a 
great  teacher ;  I  was  rather  inclined  to  take  him  as  a  great 
tonic,  —  as  a  source  of  intellectual  invigoration  and  moral 
stimulus  and  refreshment,  rather  than  of  theoretical  or 
practical  guidance."  ^  That  is  the  difference,  —  some  take 
Carlyle  as  a  teacher  and  some  as  a  tonic,  —  "a  source  of 
intellectual  invigoration  and  moral  stimulus."  It  seems,  too, 
that  of  late  years,  more  and  more  readers  take  Huxley's 
point  of  view  ;  and  many  who  begin  with  Tyndall  pass  from 
the  first  stage  of  appreciation  to  the  second.  Their  attitude 
toward  Sartor  divides  Carlyle's  admirers  into  these  two 
classes. 

For  the  professed  Carlylean,  the  reader  who  takes  Car- 
lyle for  his  teacher,  Sartor  presents  the  law  and  the  gospel 
of  the  master  in  their  most  pleasing  and  most  portable 
form.  Nowhere  else,  except,  perhaps,  in  the  Edinburgh 
address,  does  he  put  his  special  message  before  the  world 
with  such  winsomeness.  Nearly  all  the  graces  and  splendors 
1  Professor  Tyndall,  Nhieteenth  Century,  Jan.,  1894. 


Ixii  INTR  on  UC  TION. 

of  poetry,  except  the  controlling  influence  of  verse,  accom- 
pany and  decorate  that  message.  It  is  blended  with  the 
most  tender,  delicate  human  interest.  It  is  made  acceptable 
by  humor.  What  the  message  really  is,  all  critics  are  agreed. 
Directly  in  the  face  of  Byron  and  Bulwer  and  even  Scott, 
who  exalted  the  aristocratic  social  ideal,  despising  implicitly 
both  trade  and  work,  Carlyle,  the  son  of  the  Scottish  mason, 
sings  the  hymn  of  labor.  "  Two  men  I  honour  and  no 
third.  First  the  toilworn  Craftsman,  that  wdth  earth-made 
Implement  laboriously  conquers  the  Earth,  and  makes  her 
man's."  So  his  poean  opens.  How  harshly  this  note 
must  have  rung  in  the  ears  of  a  generation  wdiich  had  been 
enchanted  by  the  shallow  strains  of  Lara  and  genteel  inan- 
ities of  Felham  !  To  the  comfortable  Philistinism  of  that 
day  how  heretical  must  have  sounded  such  a  cry  from  the 
wilderness  as  this  :  "  Produce  !  Produce  !  Were  it  but  the 
pitifullest  infinitesimal  fraction  of  a  Product,  produce  it,  in 
God's  name  !  'T  is  the  utmost  thou  hast  in  thee  ;  out  with 
it,  then  !  Up,  up  !  W^hatsoever  thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do 
it  with  thy  whole  might,  ^^^ork  while  it  is  called  To-day  ; 
for  the  Night  cometh,  wherein  no  man  can  work."  In 
Sartor  is  a  condemnation  of  cant  as  hearty  as  Johnson's,  — 
a  condemnation  to  be  often  repeated.  The  gospel  of 
Silence  is  here,  not  as  yet  "  effectively  compressed  in  thirty 
fine  volumes."  But  all  these  are  only  parts  or  aspects  of 
the  great  clothes  doctrine  or  philosophy.  This  is,  in  a  word, 
radicalism,  —  going  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  stripping  the 
clothes,  coverings,  wrappages  from  life,  religion,  and  politics. 
The  aim  of  the  clothes  philosophy  —  as  of  every  other  phi- 
losophy—  is  to  see  the  thing  itself,  apart  from  all  accidental 
and  temporary  forms.  Carlyle,  in  Sartor,  is  trying  to  get 
the  conventional,  PhiUstinian  England  of  his  day  back  to 
first  principles. 

It  is  probably  safe  to  say  that  four  persons  read  Sartor 


IN  TROD  UC  TION.  Ixiii 

in  the  spirit  of  Huxley  for  one  in  the  spirit  of  Tyndall. 
The  general  reader  is  rather  a  taker  of  tonics  than  a  devotee. 
Coleridge  has  a  fine  phrase  about  awakening  the  mind  from 
the  lethargy  of  custom ;  and  this  is  precisely  the  effect  of 
Sartor  on  the  ordinary  lover  of  books.  In  all  our  specula- 
tions we  have  tacitly  figured  man  as  a  clothed  animal. 
In  Sartor  we  see  the  natural  man,  stripped  of  all  the  con- 
ventions with  which  he  has  enswathed  himself.  Of  our- 
selves we  would  have  gone  on  in  our  conventional  life, 
decent,  respectable,  commonplace,  with  little  thought  either 
of  the  stars  above  us  or  the  graves  under  our  feet.  From 
this  lethargy  of  custom  Carlyle  awakens  us,  —  he  compels 
us  to  listen  to  him.  We  cannot  choose  but  hear.  Except 
for  him  it  might  never  have  occurred  to  us  that  our  lives  are 
spent  in  merely  grinding  down  clothes  into  rags.  After  all 
our  varied  activity,  the  final  result  is  little  more.  "How 
true,"  we  say,  "we  never  thought  of  it  before."  On  the 
other  hand,  in  our  mean  cares  and  common  tasks  and  narrow 
interests,  we  had  been  so  many  men  with  muck-rakes,  never 
seeing  the  crown  above  our  heads.  In  spite  of  our  reiterated 
creeds  and  confessions,  we  hardly  thought  of  ourselves  as 
part  of  the  wonderful  race  —  mankind  —  that  wild-flaming, 
wild-thundering  train  of  Heaven's  artillery,  "  that  flames  and 
thunders  through  the  everlasting  deep."  On  the  one  hand, 
Sartor  shows  us  the  infinitely  little,  and,  on  the  other,  the 
infinitely  great  in  the  lives  of  us  all.  No  one  before  had 
set  himself  to  the  task  with  so  much  power  and  earnestness; 
the  effect  is  magical.  Like  Mirzah's  genius,  Carlyle  stands 
at  our  side  and  strengthens  our  eyesight  till  we  are  able  to 
penetrate  the  mist  about  us,  and  behold  the  vision  of  life 
taking  shape  and  meaning  before  our  eyes. 

Apart  from  its  general  meaning  to  these  two  classes  of 
readers,  Sartor  may  be  regarded  as  a  modern  Pilgrim's 
Progress,     It  represents  a  career  which  Carlyle  would  have 


Ixiv  INTRODUCTION. 

us  believe  is  typical  of  this  age, —  the  round  of  experience 
felt  by  an  earnest  soul  confronted  by  the  problems  of  the 
day.  In  this  spiritual  autobiography  the  love  affair  of 
Teufelsdrockh  is  only  one  episode,  though  a  most  important 
one,  in  his  toilsome  journey  from  the  modern  City  of  Des- 
truction to  the  nineteenth  century  New  Jerusalem.  The 
course  is  plain.  He  begins  with  certainties  and  almost  at 
once  encounters  doubts.  His  mother  had  taught  him  "  her 
own  simple  version  of  the  Christian  faith,"  and  he  considers 
this  a  richer  possession  than  two  and  thirty  quarterings  of  the 
family  arms.  At  the  university  he  learns  what  loneliness  is, 
and  finds  no  guidance  from  his  teachers.  He  thinks  out  a 
ground-plan  of  nature  and  human  life  ;  but  he  feels  that  it 
is  faulty  and  mechanical.  With  little  external  stimulus  he 
begins  to- doubt  and  to  inquire  *' concerning  miracles  and 
the  evidences  of  religious  faith."  The  end  is  blank  unbe- 
lief, —  for  a  time.  Teufelsdrockh  disbelieves  in  all  things, 
even  in  himself,  and  consequently,  in  the  possibility  of  being 
loved.  Naturally  and  inevitably  he  is  utterly  wretched. 
For  a  short  time  his  love  for  Blumine  lifts  him  into  ecstatic 
happiness,  but  his  disappointment  throws  him  back  upon 
himself  in  tenfold  misery.  He  undergoes  wanderings,  pri- 
vations, sickness  ''  of  the  chronic  sort,"  which  he  sustains 
with  an  intense  kind  of  stoicism.  He  cannot  escape  from 
himself, — from  his  own  shadow.  Want  of  worldly  success 
makes  his  case  worse.  Shut  out  from  useful  activity,  he  is 
forced  to  ''devour  his  own  heart."  There  is  no  relief  for 
his  misery.  Still  he  does  not  abandon  the  struggle ;  he  is 
a  most  reluctant  unbeliever.  The  "  English  editor's  "  com- 
ment on  the  situation  is  that  Teufelsdrockh  is  still  a  servant 
of  God  at  the  very  moment  of  doubting  His  existence, 
because  he  will  not  blind  his  intellect  or  juggle  with  his 
conscience.  He  can  find  no  comfort  in  the  "  Profit-and- 
Loss  philosophy,"  as  he  scornfully  calls  the  reigning  utili- 


INTRODUCTION.  Ixv 

tarianism  ;  and  he  cannot  believe  that  "  soul  is  synonymous 
with  stomach."  Faith  is  still  the  one  thing  needful.  One 
ray  of  light  remains.  ''  The  Infinite  nature  of  Duty  "  is 
"  still  dimly  present  to  him."  But  the  light  is  very  dim. 
Failure  in  life  and  mental  and  physical  suffering  drive  him 
to  the  very  brink  of  self-murder.  His  misery  makes  him 
indifferent  to  danger  and  endows  him  with  a  counterfeit 
courage,  while  at  the  same  time  he  is  subject  to  the  bond- 
age of  "  a  continual,  indefinite,  pining  fear."  ''  It  seemed  as 
if  all  things  in  the  Heavens  above  and  the  Earth  beneath 
would  hurt  me  ;  as  if  the  Heavens  and  the  Earth  were  but 
boundless  jaws  of  a  devouring  monster,  wherein  I,  palpitat- 
ing, waited  to  be  devoured." 

It  is  plain  that  this  state  of  mind  could  not  last.  The 
City  of  Destruction,  by  its  very  nature,  cannot  be  an 
abiding-place  for  any  pilgrim.  This  is  the  last  pass  to  which 
the  Everlasting  No  reduces  Teufelsdrockh.  This  famous 
phrase  of  Carlyle's,  though  often  misunderstood  ^  to  be  the 
"  protest "  of  the  hero,  means  simply  the  sum  of  those  facts 
which  seem  to  deny  the  existence  of  a  moral  order  in  the 
universe.  It  is  that  series  of  phenomena  which  have  pro- 
voked the  obstinate  questionings  of  thoughtful  men  from  the 
days  of  Job  down,  when  given  a  negative  interpretation. 
The  Everlasting  No  peals  "  authoritatively  through  all  the 
recesses "  of  the  pilgrim's  being :  "  Thou  art  fatherless, 
outcast,  and  the  Universe  is  mine  (the  Devil's)."  The 
Everlasting  No  is,  then,  in  plain  terms,  according  to  Carlyle, 
the  Devil  ;  which  again  is,  according  to  Goethe,  the  spirit 
which  denies.  At  once  the  question  arises,  ''  How  does  the 
pilgrim  Teufelsdrockh  vanquish  this  Apollyon  ?  "  The  query 
is  all  important ;  for  Carlyle  considers  the  conflict  between 
inherited  belief  and  new  knowledge  as  typical  and  inevitable. 
"  Not  being  born  purely  a  Loghead  {Dummkopf),  thou  hadst 
1  See  153  13,  n.  p.  350. 


Ixvi  INTRODUCTION. 

no  other  outlook"  than  skepticism.  "  The  whole  world  is, 
like  thee,  sold  to  Unbelief."  In  Teufelsdrockh's  case,  the 
first  step  on  the  way  out  of  the  maze  is  taken  in  the  Rue 
St.  Thomas  de  I'Enfer.  This  is,  in  plain  terms,  a  moment 
of  illumination,  a  revulsion  of  feeling,  a  reaction  of  courage 
to  endure  life  after  a  prolonged  period  of  depression  and 
cowardice.  This  is  the  turning-point  in  his  career.  He 
becomes  less  morbid  and  less  absorbed  in  his  own  troubles  ; 
he  can,  "  at  least  in  lucid  intervals,  look  away  from  his  own 
sorrows  over  the  many-coloured  world."  Through  much 
experience  of  life  he  attains  to  the  "  Centre  of  Indifference," 
which  is  realizing  the  nothingness  of  life,  not  only  for  him- 
self, but  for  the  race.  The  stars  burn  and  brand  this  truth 
into  him  as  they  taught  the  lover  of  Maud. 

Now  Teufelsdrockh  is  in  the  way  to  receive  the  Everlast- 
ing Yea,  or  positive  principle  of  life.  What  is  said  at  this 
point  of  the  inevitable  conflict  between  the  flesh  and  the 
spirit  is  a  restatement,  in  non-theological  terms,  of  truths 
v;hich  have  been  more  clearly  stated  by  St.  Paul.  Reaching 
the  "  Centre  of  Indifference  "  is,  in  effect,  losing  sight  of  his 
own  woes  in  view  of  the  fate  of  human  kind.  This  "  pre- 
liminary moral  act  —  annihilation  of  self  (^Selbsttddtimgy  — 
is  indispensable  if  further  progress  is  to  be  made.  From 
the  contemplation  of  Nature  in  the  new  spirit  comes  the 
new  Evangel,  —  "  The  Universe  is  not  dead  and  demoniacal, 
a  charnel  house  with  spectres  ;  but  godlike,  and  my  Father's." 
This  is  the  very  opposite  of  the  authoritative  utterance  of 
the  Everlasting  No.  Now  he  is  on  the  threshold  of  the 
"  Sanctuary  of  Sorrow,"  which  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
the  central  fact  of  Christianity.  The  plainest  interpreta- 
tion of  this  is  that  Teufelsdrockh,  after  a  period  of  unbelief, 
turns  again,  wistfully,  to  the  faith  of  his  childhood.  The 
whim  of  happiness  must  be  discarded  if  the  secret  of  life  is 
to  be  learned  ;  and  it  is  to  be  learned  by  that  age  and  gen- 


JNTR  on  UC  TION.  Ixvii 

eration  not  from  Byron  but  from  Goethe.  There  is  some- 
thing higher  than  happiness.  The  great  secret  is  Ent- 
sagen,  renunciation.  "  Love  not  Pleasure  ;  love  God. 
This  is  the  Everlasting  Yea,  wherein  all  contradiction 
is  solved." 

It  is  not  necessary  at  this  point  to  interpret  this  precept, 
nor  to  insist  on  Carlyle's  personal  obligations  to  Goethe  for 
the  doctrine  of  renunciation,  which  were  very  great.  In  the 
case  of  his  hero,  the  reception  of  this  truth  —  this  positive 
principle  of  life  —  leads  to  immediate  results  ;  the  rejection 
of  Voltairism,  and  renewed  and  deeper  reverence  for  the 
"Worship  of  Sorrow."  Then  follows  the  establishment  of 
very  important  convictions  :  that  doubt  of  any  kind  cannot 
be  removed  except  by  action ;  that  the  duty  to  be  done  is 
the  nearest ;  and  that  the  ideal  is  to  be  found  in  the  domain 
of  the  actual.  "  Here  or  nowhere  is  America."  Teufels- 
drockh,  in  this  serener  frame  of  mind,  resolves  to  be,  not  a 
chaos,  but  a  world,  and  finds  his  sphere  of  usefulness  in  the 
production  of  literature. 

That  all  this  applies  accurately  to  Carlyle  is  less  impor- 
tant than  that  he  considers  the  case  of  Teufelsdrockh  to  be 
typical,  at  least  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  experience. 
The  evil  is  widespread  ;  but  possibly  Carlyle's  method  of 
cure,  which  is  Goethe's,  will  not  be  universally  accepted. 
Put  roughly  and  briefly,  the  evil  is  the  inevitable  break 
with  inherited  faith  and  lapse  into  crippling  unbelief.  The 
cure  lies  in  a  revolt  from  materialism,  peace  in  work,  and 
the  Goethean  philosophy.  These  phases  of  spiritual  struggle 
have  since  been  repeated  in  many  memoirs  and  biographies  ; 
they  have  even  become  the  commonplaces  of  the  novelist. 
The  problem  is  old  enough,  but  is  Carlyle's  solution  of  it 
so  very  new  ?  Is  his  doctrine  so  very  different  from  the 
essential  teaching  of  nineteen  centuries  ?  Is  it  difficult  to 
imagine  any  wise  teacher  of  the  Christian   faith  in  any  age 


Ixviii  INTROD  UC  TION. 

saying  to  the  doubting,  burdened  soul,  "  Renounce  self  ; 
love  not  pleasure,  love  God  ;  work  in  well-doing  "  ?  Carlyle 
does  not  define  the  essential  term,  —  God.  To  the  Catholic, 
to  the  early  Protestant,  to  the  Mohammedan,  that  one  word 
is  an  entire  theology,  as  Newman  points  out.  I  have  no 
wish  to  assail  Carlyle's  reputation  for  heterodoxy,  but  I  fear 
that  he  cannot  be  successfully  defended  from  the  charge  of 
preaching  Theism  in  Sartor^  at  least.  He  either  means  by 
God,  much  what  his  old-fashioned  peasant  mother  meant, 
as  indeed  he  continually  assured  her,  or  he  means  nothing. 
Possibly  he  refused  to  define  it  even  to  himself ;  but  unless 
he  did  so,  how  could  he  keep  his  readers  from  using  it  with 
its  old  connotation  ?  If  he  said  A,  and  would  not,  accord- 
ing to  the  proverb,  follow  it  up  with  B,  he  showed  no 
reason  why  his  disciples  should  be  so  illogical. 

At  the  end  of  Book  I,  Carlyle  drops  his  jest  for  a  time 
and  asks  in  all  seriousness,  "  What  is  the  use  of  health  or 
of  life  if  not  to  do  some  work  therewith  ?  And  what  work 
nobler  than  transplanting  foreign  Thought  into  the  barren 
domestic  soil  ? "  This  reveals  his  own  view  of  his  mission. 
He  had  been  transplanting  foreign  thought  in  his  essays 
and  translations  ;  but  no  essay  or  translation  was  to  have 
the  vogue  and  influence  of  Sartor.  The  significant  thing  is 
that  the  foreign  thought  which  he  transplants  is  not  French, 
though  French  philosophy  was  dominant,  but  German. 
The  positive  teaching  of  Sartor  is  Goethean  through  and 
through.  As  he  rejected  Voltairism,  so  did  Teufelsdrockh. 
The  three  principles  in  which  Teufelsdrockh  finds  peace 
are  summed  up  in  three  quotations  from  Goethe.  In  what 
Goethe  named  world-literature,  Sartor  is  one  point  at  which 
Goethe's  influence  touched  England.^  It  is  no  wonder  that 
Carlyle  exalts  his  German  evangelist  who  showed  him  the 
way  of  escape  from  Byronism.     Except  for  the  teaching  of 

1  Manfred  was  another. 


INTR  on  UC  TION.  Ixix 

Wilhehii  Meister,  he  must  have  followed  the  counsel  Job's 
wife  gave  her  husband. 

Looking  at  it  from  another  point  of  view,  Sartor  forms 
part  of  the  literature  of  skepticism.  The  Book  of  Job,  the 
works  of  Lucretius  and  Montaigne  all  show  the  spirit  of 
doubt  or  of  unbelief  ;  but  it  is  only  in  our  own  era  that 
skepticism  has  been  recognized  as  a  distinct  literary  7notif, 
as  the  reason  for  a  book's  existence.  To  this  class  belong 
Faust,  Manfred,  Cain,  Sartor  Resartiis,  and  /;/  Menioriam, 
which  all  depict  in  different  ways  the  struggle  between  faith 
and  unfaith.  The  protagonists  are  all,  for  a  time  at  least, 
doubters.  Carlyle  and  Tennyson  find  different  remedies 
for  the  trouble,  where  Goethe  and  Byron  find  none.  But 
they  all  agree  in  this,  —  that  they  do  not  wTite  for  the  pur- 
pose of  upsetting  any  faith,  as  pronounced  freethinkers 
have  done  in  numberless  didactic  essays  and  tracts.  Their 
aim  is  art,  not  teaching.  They  are  all  deeply  in  earnest 
because  they  regard  the  questions  they  raise  as  the  weight- 
iest that  can  concern  the  mind.  They  are  all  reverent, 
they  are  never  flippant.  They  never  exhibit  the  boyish 
vehemence  of  Shelley  in  Queen  Mab.  At  the  same  time  the 
skepticism  is  the  salt  of  their  work.  Take  Mephistopheles 
out  of  Faust  and  the  drama  shrinks  into  a  mere  intrigue. 
Imagine  a  Teufelsdrockh  who  has  never  doubted,  suffered, 
renounced,  attained  to  calm,  and  the  interest  in  the  book 
has  vanished.  Unless  the  author  of  /;/  Meinoriam  found 
it  necessary  to  state  in  his  own  way  the  ''  truths  that  never 
can  be  proved,"  the  great  poem  would  dwindle  to  an  epitaph. 
Our  century  has  been  marked  by  widespread  religious  doubt. 
The  undeniable  fact  Carlyle  and  Tennyson  do  not  attempt 
to  blink.  They  have  felt  the  doubt,  and  they  offer  ways  of 
escape  from  it,  in  each  case  embodying,  as  I  believe,  their 
own  experience.  In  their  work  is  to  be  found  the  antidote 
to  Byron  ism,  and  both  show  the  influence  of  Goethe. 


Ixx  INTR  OD  UC  TION. 

In  his  parable  of  "  The  Flower,"  Tennyson  shows  that  he 
is  quite  aware  that  he  had  set  the  tune  for  all  the  minor 
singers  of  his  day.  It  is  a  simple  fact  that  his  manner  has 
dominated  the  poetry  of  the  last  forty  years  almost  as 
absolutely  as  Pope's  manner  dominated  the  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Carlyle's  distinctive  manner  is  much 
more  strongly  marked  than  Tennyson's;  but  possibly  for 
that  very  reason  has  found  no  imitators.  In  some  points, 
the  eccentricities,  as  well  as  the  excellences,  of  Browning 
and  Mr.  George  Meredith  resemble  Carlyle's  ;  but  it  would 
be  difficult  to  make  out  a  case  of  deliberate  mimicry.  Car- 
lyle's style  is  the  bow  of  Ulysses,  the  brand  of  Astur,  a 
weapon  for  no  feebler  hand  than  his.  He  has  not  led  other 
writers  to  imitate  his  style,  but  his  direct  personal  influence 
on  the  leaders  of  thought  has  been  very  great.  He  has 
influenced  the  men  of  influence.  His  first  convert  of  note 
was  Emerson.  Now  though  the  sneer  that  he  was  an 
"  American  pocket  edition  of  Carlyle "  is  ridiculous,  and 
Emerson  is  undoubtedly  his  own  man,  he  would  still  be  the 
first  to  acknowledge  his  indebtedness  to  the  great  Scotsman. 
Indeed,  the  tone  of  Emerson's  letters  to  his  friend  show 
throughout  a  curious  blending  of  friendship  and  discipleship. 
And  it  was  Emerson  who  emancipated  America  from  literary 
dependence  on  England.  During  the  nine  silent,  sad  years 
between  1833  "^^^  1842,  Tennyson,  as  yet '' the  unaccredited 
hero,"  was  Carlyle's  friend,  and  the  two  seem  to  have  had 
numberless  unchronicled  smokes  and  talks  together.  These 
years  were  undoubtedly  the  great  poet's  forty  days  in  the 
wilderness,  the  time  when  he  perfected  his  art  and  thought 
out  the  problems  of  /;/  Metnoriam;  and  there  is  good  reason 
for  believing  that  Carlyle's  Sartorian  philosophy  aided  him 
in  his  task.  Some  curious  verbal  resemblances  have  been 
already  pointed  out.^     Kingsley,  again,  in  his  earlier  novels, 

1  See  Notes,  40  30,  46  3,  4,  80  12,  81  4,  5,  84  15,  122  22,  152  18,  210  25. 


INTR  OB  UC  TION.  Ixxi 

is  unmistakably  under  the  influence  of  Carlyle.  Sandy 
Mackay,  in  Altofi  Locke^  is  admittedly  modeled  from  the 
sage  of  Chelsea.  In  the  fierceness,  the  tenderness,  the 
humor,  the  Scotch  accent  of  that  remarkable  dealer  in  second- 
hand books,  we  have  probably  the  most  artistic  represen- 
tation of  Carlyle's  wonderful  table  talk.  Ruskin,  who  came 
later,  is  also  proud  to  acknowledge  Carlyle  as  his  master  in 
his  humanitarian  efforts.  The  attitude  of  Huxley  and  Tyn- 
dall  toward  him  has  been  already  explained.  It  was 
Tyndall  who  stood  by  him  all  through  the  trials  of  the 
Edinburgh  rectorship,  and  he  was  one  of  the  few  who  saw 
him  laid  in  the  earth.  Though  only  a  few  of  the  noted 
names  are  assembled  here  to  show  his  power  over  the  minds 
of  men,  the  list  might  be  greatly  increased  ;  and  to  trace 
that  power  through  all  its  subtle  workings  would  require, 
not  a  paragraph,  but  a  volume.  It  is  "  mightiest  in  the 
mightiest,"  and  it  is  felt  only  less  keenly  by  great  masses  of 
the  undistinguished.  In  all  the  Anglian  world  —  in  Eng- 
land, the  United  States,  and  the  great  colonies  —  uncounted 
young  men  have  come  under  that  potent  spell,  and  have 
found  in  Carlyle  either  tonic,  or  teaching,  or  both.  Of  all 
his  works  none  braces  and  builds  the  spirit  up  like  Sartor 
Resartus ;  and  nowhere  else  does  Carlyle  give  the  world  so 
much  of  himself  at  his  best. 


SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

book:  I.  -* "  "    '■ '       -  , ..  , 

CHAPTER    I. 

PRELIMINARY. 

Considering  our  present  advanced  state  of  culture, 
and  how  the  Torch  of  Science  has  now  been  brandished 
and  borne  about,  with  more  or  less  effect,  for  five- 
thousand  years  and  upwards ;  how,  in  these  times 
especially,  not  only  the  Torch  still  burns,  and  perhaps  5 
more  fiercely  than  ever,  but  innumerable  Rush-lights, 
and  Sulphur-matches,  kindled  thereat,  are  also  glancing 
in  every  direction,  so  that  not  the  smallest  cranny  or 
doghole  in  Nature  or  Art  can  remain  unilluminated,  —  it 
might  strike  the  reflective  mind  with  some  surprise  that  10 
hitherto  little  or  nothing  of  a  fundamental  character, 
whether  in  the  way  of  Philosophy  or  History,  has  been 
written  on  the  subject  of  Clothes. 

Our  Theory  of  Gravitation  is  as  good  as  perfect : 
Lagrange,  it  is  well  known,  has  proved  that  the  Planetary  15 
System,  on  this  scheme,  will  endure  forever ;  Laplace, 
still  more  cunningly,  even  guesses  that  it  could  not  have 
been  made  on  any  other  scheme.  Whereby,  at  least, 
our  nautical  Logbooks  can  be  better  kept ;  and  water- 
transport  of  all  kinds  has  grown  more  commodious.  Of  20 
Geology  and  Geognosy  we  know  enough  :  what  with  the 


2  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

labours  of  our  Werners  and  Huttons,  what  with  the  ardent 
genius  of  their  disciples,  it  has  come  about  that  now,  to 
many  a  Royal  Society,  the  Creation  of  a  World  is  little 
more  mysterious  than  the  cooking  of  a  Dumpling;  con- 
5  cerning  which  last,  indeed,  there  have  been  minds  to 
whom  the  question,  How  the  Apples  were  got  in  presented 
oifficulties.  'v^'by  nicntion  our  disquisitions  on  the  Social 
Contract,  on  the  Standard  of  Taste,  on  the  Migrations  of 
•  he  He.-ring?     Then,  have  we  not  a  Doctrine  of  Rent,  a 

10  Theory  of  Value  ;  Philosophies  of  Language,  of  History, 
of  Pottery,  of  Apparitions,  of  Intoxicating  Liquors? 
Man's  whole  life  and  environment  have  been  laid  open 
and  elucidated  ;  scarcely  a  fragment  or  fibre  of  his  Soul, 
Body,  and  Possessions,  but  has  been  probed,  dissected, 

15  distilled,  desiccated,  and  scientifically  decomposed:  our 
spiritual  Faculties,  of  which  it  appears  there  are  not  a 
few,  have  their  Stewarts,  Cousins,  Royer  Collards : 
every  cellular,  vascular,  muscular  Tissue  glories  in  its 
Lawrences,  Magendies,  Bichats. 

20  How,  then,  comes  it,  may  the  reflective  mind  repeat, 
that  the  grand  Tissue  of  all  Tissues,  the  only  real  Tissue, 
should  have  been  quite  overlooked  by  Science,  —  the 
vestural  Tissue,  namely,  of  woollen  or  other  cloth ;  which 
Man's  Soul  wears  as  its  outmost  wrappage  and  overall ; 

25  wherein  his  whole  other  Tissues  are  included  and 
screened,  his  whole  Faculties  work,  his  whole  Self  lives, 
moves,  and  has  its  being?  For  if,  now  and  then,  some 
straggling  broken-winged  thinker  has  cast  an  owl's  glance 
into  this  obscure  region,  the  most  have  soared  over  it 

30  altogether  heedless ;  regarding  Clothes  as  a  property,  not 
an  accident,  as  quite  natural  and  spontaneous,  like  the 
leaves  of  trees,  like  the  plumage  of  birds.  In  all  specula- 
tions they  have  tacitly  figured  man  as  a  Clothed  Ani??ial; 
whereas  he  is  by  nature  a  Awaked  Aimnal ;  and  only  in 


PRELIMINAR  V.  3 

certain  circumstances,  by  purpose  and  device,  masks 
himself  in  Clothes.  Shakspeare  says,  we  are  creatures 
that  look  before  and  after ;  the  more  surprising  that  we 
do  not  look  round  a  little,  and  see  what  is  passing  under 
our  very  eyes.  5 

But  here,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  Germany,  learned, 
indefatigable,  deep-thinking  Germany  comes  to  our  aid. 
It  is,  after  all,  a  blessing  that,  in  these  revolutionary 
times,  there  should  be  one  country  where  abstract 
Thought  can  still  take  shelter;  that  while  the  din  and  10 
frenzy  of  Catholic  Emancipations,  and  Rotten  Boroughs, 
and  Revolts  of  Paris,  deafen  every  French  and  every 
English  ear,  the  German  can  stand  peaceful  on  his 
scientific  watch-tower ;  and,  to  the  raging,  struggling 
multitude  here  and  elsewhere,  solemnly,  from  hour  to  15 
hour,  with  preparatory  blast  of  cowhorn,  emit  his  J/d'ref 
ihr  Herren  und  lassefs  Euch  sagefi;  in  other  words,  tell 
the  Universe,  which  so  often  forgets  that  fact,  what 
o'clock  it  really  is.  Not  unfrequently  the  Germans  have 
been  blamed  for  an  unprofitable  diligence ;  as  if  they  20 
struck  into  devious  courses,  where  nothing  was  to  be  had 
but  the  toil  of  a  rough  journey;  as  if,  forsaking  the  gold- 
mines of  Finance,  and  that  political  slaughter  of  fat  oxen 
whereby  a  man  himself  grows  fat,  they  were  apt  to  run 
goose-hunting  into  regions  of  bilberries  and  crowberries,  25 
and  be  swallowed  up  at  last  in  remote  peat-bogs.  Of  that 
unwise  science,  which,  as  our  Humorist  expresses  it, 

'  By  geometric  scale 
Doth  take  the  size  of  pots  of  ale' ; 

Still  more,  of  that  altogether  misdirected  industry,  which  30 
is    seen    vigorously    thrashing    mere    straw,    there    can 
nothing  defensive  be  said.      In  so  far  as  the  Germans 
are  chargeable  with  such,  let  them  take  the  consequence. 


4  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

Nevertheless  be  it  remarked,  that  even  a  Russian  steppe 
has  tumuli  and  gold  ornaments ;  also  many  a  scene  that 
looks  desert  and  rock-bound  from  the  distance,  will 
unfold  itself,  when  visited,  into  rare  valleys.  Nay,  in 
5  any  case,  would  Criticism  erect  not  only  finger-posts  and 
turnpikes,  but  spiked  gates  and  impassable  barriers,  for 
the  mind  of  man?  It  is  written,  'Many  shall  run  to  and 
fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  increased.'  Surely  the  plain 
rule  is,  Let  each  considerate  person  have  his  way,  and 

10  see  what  it  will  lead  to.  For  not  this  man  and  that  man, 
but  all  men  make  up  mankind,  and  their  united  tasks  the 
task  of  mankind.  How  often  have  we  seen  some  such 
adventurous,  and  perhaps  much-censured  wanderer  light 
on    some    outlying,    neglected,    yet    vitally    momentous 

15  province;  the  hidden  treasures  of  which  he  first  discov- 
ered, and  kept  proclaiming  till  the  general  eye  and  effort 
were  directed  thither,  and  the  conquest  was  completed  ;  — 
thereby,  in  these  his  seemingly  so  aimless  rambles,  plant- 
ing new  standards,  founding  new  habitable  colonies,  in 

20  the  immeasurable  circumambient  realm  of  Nothingness 
and  Night!  Wise  man  was  he  who  counselled  that 
Speculation  should  have  free  course,  and  look  fearlessly 
towards  all  the  thirty-two  points  of  the  compass,  whither- 
soever and  howsoever  it  listed. 

25  Perhaps  it  is  proof  of  the  stinted  condition  in  which 
pure  Science,  especially  pure  moral  Science,  languishes 
among  us  English  ;  and  how  our  mercantile  greatness, 
and  invaluable  Constitution,  impressing  a  political  or 
other  immediately  practical  tendency  on  all  English  cul- 

30  ture  and  endeavour,  cramp  the  free  flight  of  Thought,  — 
that  this,  not  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  but  recognition  even 
that  we  have  no  such  Philosophy,  stands  here  for  the  first 
time  published  in  our  language.  What  English  intellect 
could  have  chosen  such  a  topic,  or  by  chance  stumbled 


PRELIMINARY.  ^ 

on  it?  But  for  that  same  unshackled,  and  even  seques- 
tered condition  of  the  German  Learned,  which  permits 
and  induces  them  to  fish  in  all  manner  of  waters,  with  all 
manner  of  nets,  it  seems  probable  enough,  this  abstruse 
Inquiry  might,  in  spite  of  the  results  it  leads  to,  have  5 
continued  dormant  for  indefinite  periods.  The  Editor  of 
these  sheets,  though  otherwise  boasting  himself  a  man  of 
confirmed  speculative  habits,  and  perhaps  discursive 
enough,  is  free  to  confess,  that  never,  till  these  last 
months,  did  the  above  very  plain  considerations,  on  our  10 
total  want  of  a  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  occur  to  him  ;  and 
then,  by  quite  foreign  suggestion.  By  the  arrival,  namely, 
of  a  new  book  from  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  of  Weiss- 
nichtwo  ;  treating  expressly  of  this  subject ;  and  in  a 
style  which,  whether  understood  or  not,  could  not  even  15 
by  the  blindest  be  overlooked.  In  the  present  Editor's 
way  of  thought,  this  remarkable  Treatise,  with  its  Doc- 
trines, whether  as  judicially  acceded  to,  or  judicially 
denied,  has  not  remained  without  effect. 

'  Die  Kleider,  iJw  Werden  und  Wirken  (Clothes,  their  20 
'  Origin  and  Influence)  :  von  Diog.  Teufelsdrockh^  J.  U.  D. 
'  etc.     Stillschweigeii  imd  Cos^^^-      Weissiiichtwo,  1 83 1 . 

'  Here,'  says  the  Weissnichtwo' sche  Anzeiger^  '  comes  a 
'  Volume  of  that  extensive,  close-printed,  close-meditated 
'  sort,  which  be  it  spoken  with  pride,  is  seen  only  in  Ger-  25 
'  many,  perhaps  only  in  Weissnichtwo.  Issuing  from  the 
'  hitherto  irreproachable  Firm  of  Stillschweigen  and 
'  Company,  with  every  external  furtherance,  it  is  of  such 
'  internal  quality  as  to  set  Neglect  at  defiance.'  .  .  .  '  A 
'work,'  concludes  the  well-nigh  enthusiastic  Reviewer,  30 
'  interesting  alike  to  the  antiquary,  the  historian,  and  the 
'  philosophic  thinker ;  a  masterpiece  of  boldness,  lynx- 
'eyed  acuteness,  and  rugged  independent  Germanism 
'  and  Philanthropy  (derber  Kerjideutschheit  und  Mcnschen- 


6  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

^  Iichc)\  which  will  not,  assuredly,  pass  current  without 
'  opposition  in  high  places ;  but  must  and  will  exalt  the 
'  almost  new  name  of  Teufelsdrockh  to  the  first  ranks  of 
*  Philosophy,  in  our  German  Temple  of  Honour.' 

5  Mindful  of  old  friendship,  the  distinguished  Professor, 
in  this  the  first  blaze  of  his  fame,  which  however  does 
not  dazzle  him,  sends  hither  a  Presentation-copy  of  his 
Book ;  with  compliments  and  encomiums  which  modesty 
forbids    the    present    Editor    to    rehearse ;    yet   without 

[o  indicated  wish  or  hope  of  any  kind,  except  what  may  be 
implied  in  the  concluding  phrase  :  Mochte  es  (this  remark- 
able Treatise)  auch  wi  Brittischeii  Boden  gedeiheti  / 


CHAPTER    II. 


EDITORIAL     DIFFICULTIES. 


If  for  a  speculative  man,  'whose  seedfield,'  in  the 
sublime  words  of  the  Poet,  'is  Time,'  no  conquest  is  im- 

15  portant  but  that  of  new  ideas,  then  might  the  arrival  of 
Professor  Teufelsdrockh's  Book  be  marked  with  chalk  in 
the  Editor's  calendar.  It  is  indeed  an  'extensive  Vol- 
ume,' of  boundless,  almost  formless  contents,  a  very  Sea 
of  thought ;  neither  calm  nor  clear,  if  you  will ;  yet  wherein 

20  the  toughest  pearl-diver  may  dive  to  his  utmost  depth,  and 
return  not  only  with  sea-wreck  but  with  true  orients. 

Directly  on  the  first  perusal,  almost  on  the  first  delib- 
erate inspection,  it  became  apparent  that  here  a  quite 
new  Branch  of  Philosophy,  leading  to  as  yet  undescried 

25  ulterior  results,  was  disclosed ;  farther,  what  seemed 
scarcely  less  interesting,  a  quite  new  human  Individuality, 
an  almost  unexampled  personal  character,  that,  nam«Jyv 


EDITORIAL   DIFFICULTIES.  7 

of  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  the  Discloser.  Of  both 
which  novelties,  as  far  as  might  be  possible,  we  resolved 
to  master  the  significance.  But  as  man  is  emphatically 
a  proselytising  creature,  no  sooner  was  such  mastery 
even  fairly  attempted,  than  the  new  question  arose:  5 
How  might  this  acquired  good  be  imparted  to  others, 
perhaps  in  equal  need  thereof ;  how  could  the  Philos- 
ophy of  Clothes,  and  the  Author  of  such  Philosophy,  be 
brought  home,  in  any  measure,  to  the  business  and 
bosoms  of  our  own  English  Nation  ?  For  if  new-got  gold  10 
is  said  to  burn  the  pockets  till  it  be  cast  forth  into 
circulation,  much  more  may  new  Truth. 

Here,  however,  difficulties  occurred.  The  first  thought 
naturally  was  to  publish  Article  after  Article  on  this 
remarkable  Volume,  in  such  widely-circulating  Critical  15 
Journals  as  the  Editor  might  stand  connected  with,  or 
by  money  or  love  procure  access  to.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  it  not  clear  that  such  matter  as  must  here  be 
revealed  and  treated  of  might  endanger  the  circulation  of 
any  Journal  extant?  If,  indeed,  all  party-divisions  in  20 
the  State  could  have  been  abolished.  Whig,  Tory,  and 
Radical,  embracing  in  discrepant  union ;  and  all  the 
Journals  of  the  Nation  could  have  been  jumbled  into  one 
Journal,  and  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  poured  forth  in 
incessant  torrents  therefrom,  the  attempt  had  seemed  25 
possible.  But,  alas,  what  vehicle  of  that  sort  have  we, 
except  Fraser's  Magazine"^  A  vehicle  all  strewed  (figura- 
tively speaking)  with  the  maddest  Waterloo-Crackers, 
exploding  distractively  and  destructively,  wheresoever 
the  mystified  passenger  stands  or  sits ;  nay,  in  any  case,  30 
understood  to  be,  of  late  years,  a  vehicle  full  to  over- 
flowing, and  inexorably  shut !  Besides,  to  state  the 
Philosophy  of  Clothes  without  the  Philosopher,  the  ideas 
j^;^  Teufelsdrockh  without  something  of  his  personality, 


8  SAR  TOR .  RES  A  R  TUS. 

was  it  not  to  insure  both  of  entire  misapprehension? 
Now  for  Biography,  had  it  been  otherwise  admissible, 
there  were  no  adequate  documents,  no  hope  of  obtaining 
such,  but  rather,  owing  to  circumstances,  a  special 
5  despair.  Thus  did  the  Editor  see  himself,  for  the  while, 
shut  out  from  all  public  utterance  of  these  extraordinary- 
Doctrines,  and  constrained  to  revolve  them,  not  without 
disquietude,  in  the  dark  depths  of  his  own  mind. 

So    had    it    lasted    for    some    months ;    and    now    the 

10  Volume  on  Clothes,  read  and  again  read,  was  in  several 
points  becoming  lucid  and  lucent ;  the  personality  of  its 
Author  more  and  more  surprising,  but,  in  spite  of  all 
that  memory  and  conjecture  could  do,  more  and  more 
enigmatic ;    whereby  the    old    disquietude    seemed   fast 

15  settling  into  fixed  discontent,  —  when  altogether  un- 
expectedly arrives  a  Letter  from  Herr  Hofrath  Heu- 
schrecke,  our  Professor's  chief  friend  and  associate  in 
Weissnichtwo,  with  whom  we  had  not  previously  cor- 
responded.    The  Hofrath,  after  much  quite  extraneous 

20  matter,  began  dilating  largely  on  the  'agitation  and 
attention '  which  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  was  exciting 
in  its  own  German  Republic  of  Letters;  on  the  deep 
significance  and  tendency  of  his  Friend's  Volume ;  and 
then,  at  length,  with  great  circumlocution,  hinted  at  the 

25  practicability  of  conveying  '  some  knowledge  of  it,  and  of 
him,  to  England,  and  through  England  to  the  distant 
West':  a  Work  on  Professor  Teufelsdrockh,  'were  un- 
doubtedly welcome  to  the  Family^  the  National^  or  any 
other  of  those  patriotic  Libraries^  at  present  the  glory  of 

30  British  Literature ' ;  might  work  revolutions  in  Thought ; 
and  so  forth  ;  —  in  conclusion,  intimating  not  obscurely, 
that  should  the  present  Editor  feel  disposed  to  undertake 
a  Biography  of  Teufelsdrockh,  he,  Hofrath  Heuschrecke, 
had  it  in  his  power  to  furnish  the  requisite  documents. 


EDITORIAL   DIFFICULTIES.  9 

As  in  some  chemical  mixture,  that  has  stood  long 
evaporating,  but  would  not  crystallise,  instantly  when 
the  wire  or  other  fixed  substance  is  introduced,  crystalli- 
sation commences,  and  rapidly  proceeds  till  the  whole  is 
finished,  so  was  it  with  the  Editor's  mind  and  this  offer  5 
of  Heuschrecke's.  Form  arose  out  of  void  solution  and 
discontinuity;  like  united  itself  with  like  in  definite 
arrangement :  and  soon  either  in  actual  vision  and  pos- 
session, or  in  fixed  reasonable  hope,  the  image  of  the 
whole  Enterprise  had  shaped  itself,  so  to  speak,  into  a  10 
solid  mass.  Cautiously,  yet  courageously,  through  the 
twopenny  post,  application  to  the  famed  redoubtable 
Oliver  Yorke  was  now  made  :  an  interview,  interviews 
with  that  singular  man  have  taken  place  ;  with  more  of 
assurance  on  our  side,  with  less  of  satire  (at  least  of  open  15 
satire)  on  his,  than  we  anticipated ;  —  for  the  rest,  with 
such  issue  as  is  now  visible.  As  to  these  same  'patriotic 
Libraries,'  the  Hofrath's  counsel  could  only  be  viewed 
with  silent  amazement ;  but  with  his  offer  of  Documents 
we  joyfully  and  almost  instantaneously  closed.  Thus,  20 
too,  in  the  sure  expectation  of  these,  we  already  see  our 
task  begun  ;  and  this  our  Sartor  Resa7'tHS,  which  is 
properly  a  'Life  and  Opinions  of  Herr  Teufelsdrockh,' 
hourly  advancing. 

Of  our  fitness  for  the  Enterprise,  to  which  we  have  25 
such  title  and  vocation,  it  were  perhaps  uninteresting  to 
say  more.  Let  the  British  reader  study  and  enjoy,  in 
simplicity  of  heart,  what  is  here  presented  him,  and  with 
whatever  metaphysical  acumen,  and  talent  for  meditation 
he  is  possessed  of.  Let  him  strive  to  keep  a  free,  open  30 
sense;  cleared  from  the  mists  of  prejudice,  above  all 
from  the  paralysis  of  cant;  and  directed  rather  to  the 
Book   itself  than  to   the  Editor   of  the  Book.     Who  or 


lo  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

what  such  Editor  may  be,  must  remain  conjectural,  and 
even  insignificant  •}  it  is  a  voice  publishing  tidings  of 
the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ;  undoubtedly  a  Spirit  address- 
ing Spirits  :  whoso  hath  ears,  let  him  hear. 
5  On  one  other  point  the  Editor  thinks  it  needful  to 
give  warning:  namely,  that  he  is  animated  with  a  true 
though  perhaps  a  feeble  attachment  to  the  Institutions 
of  our  Ancestors  ;  and  m.inded  to  defend  these,  according 
to  ability,  at  all  hazards ;  nay,  it  was  partly  with  a  view 

lo  to  such  defence  that  he  engaged  in  this  undertaking. 
To  stem,  or  if  that  be  impossible,  profitably  to  divert  the 
current  of  Innovation,  such  a  Volume  as  Teufelsdrockh's, 
if  cunningly  planted  down,  were  no  despicable  pile,  or 
floodgate,  in  the  logical  wear. 

15  For  the  rest,  be  it  no  wise  apprehended,  that  any 
personal  connexion  of  ours  with  Teufelsdrockh,  Heu- 
schrecke,  or  this  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  can  pervert  our 
judgment,  or  sway  us  to  extenuate  or  exaggerate.  Power- 
less,  we  yenture   to   promise,   are   those   private    Com- 

20  pliments  themselves.  Grateful  they  may  well  be  ;  as 
generous  illusions  of  friendship  ;  as  fair  mementos  of 
bygone  unions,  of  those  nights  and  suppers  of  the  Gods, 
when  lapped  in  the  symphonies  and  harmonies  of  Philo- 
sophic  Eloquence,  though  with   baser   accompaniments, 

25  the  present  Editor  revelled  in  that  feast  of  reason,  never 
since  vouchsafed  him  in  so  full  measure  !  But  what 
then?  A7nicus  Plato ^  magis  arnica  Veritas ;  Teufelsdrockh 
is  our  friend.  Truth  is  our  divinity.  In  our  historical 
and  critical  capacity,  we  hope  we  are  strangers  to  all  the 

30  world  ;  have  feud  or  favour  with  no  one,  —  save  indeed 
the  Devil,  with  whom,  as  with  the  Prince  of  Lies  and 
Darkness,   we    do    at    all    times    wage    internecine    war. 

1  With  us  even  he  still  communicates  in  some  sort  of  mask,  or 
muffler,  and,  we  have  reason  to  think,  under  a  feigned  name  !  —  O.  Y. 


REMINISCENCES.  1 1 

This  assurance,  at  an  epoch  when  puffery  and  quackery 
have  reached  a  height  unexampled  in  the  annals  of  man- 
kind, and  even  English  Editors,  like  Chinese  Shop- 
keepers, must  write  on  their  door-lintels.  No  cheating  here, 
—  we  thought  it  good  to  premise.  5 


CHAPTER    III. 


REMINISCENCES. 


To  the  Author's  private  circle  the  appearance  of  this 
singular  Work  on  Clothes  must  have  occasioned  little 
less  surprise  than  it  has  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  For 
ourselves,  at  least,  few  things  have  been  more  unex- 
pected. Professor  Teufelsdrockh,  at  the  period  of  our  lo 
acquaintance  with  him,  seemed  to  lead  a  quite  still  and 
self-contained  life  :  a  man  devoted  to  the  higher  Philoso- 
phies, indeed  ;  yet  more  likely,  if  he  published  at  all,  to 
publish  a  Refutation  of  Hegel  and  Bardili,  both  of 
whom,  strangely  enough,  he  included  under  a  common  15 
ban  ;  than  to  descend,  as  he  has  here  done,  into  the 
angry  noisy  Forum,  with  an  Argument  that  cannot  but 
exasperate  and  divide.  Not,  that  we  can  remember,  was 
the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  once  touched  upon  between 
us.  If  through  the  high,  silent,  meditative  Transcenden-  20 
talism  of  our  Friend  we  detected  any  practical  tendency 
whatever,  it  was  at  most  Political,  and  towards  a  certain 
prospective,  and  for  the  present  quite  speculative,  Rad- 
icalism ;  as  indeed  some  correspondence,  on  his  part, 
with  Herr  Oken  of  Jena  was  now  and  then  suspected ;  25 
though  his  special  contributions  to  the  Isis  could  never 
be  more  than  surmised  at.     But,  at  all  events,  nothing 


12  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

Moral,  still  less  anything  Didactico-Religious,  was  looked 
for  from  him. 

Well  do  we  recollect  the  last  words  he  spoke  in  our 
hearing ;  which  indeed,  with  the  Night  they  were  uttered 
5  in,  are  to  be  forever  remembered.  Lifting  his  huge  tum- 
bler of  Gukguk^  and  for  a  moment  lowering  his  tobacco- 
pipe,  he  stood  up  in  full  coffeehouse  (it  was  Zur  Gri'incn 
Gans,  the  largest  in  Weissnichtwo,  where  all  the  Virtuos- 
ity, and  nearly  all  the  Intellect  of  the  place  assembled 

10  of  an  evening);  and  there,  with  low,  soul-stirring  tone, 
and  the  look  truly  of  an  angel,  though  whether  of  a  white 
or  of  a  black  one  might  be  dubious,  proposed  this  toast: 
£)ie  Sache  der  An?ien  in  Gottes  und  Teufels  Na77ie7i  (The 
Cause  of  the  Poor  in  Heaven's  name  and 's)!     One 

15  full  shout,  breaking  the  leaden  silence  ;  then  a  gurgle  of 
innumerable  emptying  bumpers,  again  followed  by  univer- 
sal cheering,  returned  him  loud  acclaim.  It  was  the 
finale  of  the  night :  resuming  their  pipes  ;  in  the  highest 
enthusiasm,  amid  volumes  of  tobacco-smoke  ;  triumphant, 

20  cloud-capt  without  and  within,  the  assembly  broke  up, 
each  to  his  thoughtful  pillow.  Bleibt  dock  ein  echter  Spass- 
und  Galgefi-  Vogel,  said  several ;  meaning  thereby  that,  one 
day,  he  would  probably  be  hanged  for  his  democratic  sen- 
timents.    Wo  stecJzt  dock  der  Schalk  /    added  they,  looking 

25  round :  but  Teufelsdrockh  had  retired  by  private  alleys, 
and  the  Compiler  of  these  pages  beheld  him  no  more. 

In  such  scenes  has  it  been  our  lot  to  live  with  this 
Philosopher,  such  estimate  to  form  of  his  purposes  and 
powers.     And  yet,  thou  brave  Teufelsdrockh,  who  could 

30  tell  what  lurked  in  thee?  Under  those  thick  locks  of 
thine,  so  long  and  lank,  overlapping  roof-wise  the  gravest 
face  we  ever  in  this  world  saw,  there  dwelt  a  most  busy 
brain.     In  thy  eyes  too,  deep  under  their  shaggy  brows, 

1  Gukguk  is  unhappily  only  an  academical  —  beer. 


REMINISCENCES.  13 

and  looking  out  so  still  and  dreamy,  have  we  not  noticed 
gleams  of  an  ethereal  or  else  a  diabolic  fire,  and  half- 
fancied  that  their  stillness  was  but  the  rest  of  infinite 
motion,  the  sleep  of  a  spinning-top  ?  Thy  little  figure, 
there  as,  in  loose  ill-brushed  threadbare  habiliments,  5 
thou  sattest,  amid  litter  and  lumber,  whole  days,  to  'think 
and  smoke  tobacco,'  held  in  it  a  mighty  heart.  The  secrets 
of  man's  Life  were  laid  open  to  thee  ;  thou  sawest  into 
the  mystery  of  the  Universe,  farther  than  another ;  thou 
hadst  in  petto  thy  remarkable  Volume  on  Clothes.  Nay,  10 
were  there  not  in  that  clear  logically-founded  Transcen- 
dentalism of  thine ;  still  more,  in  thy  meek,  silent,  deep- 
seated  Sans-culottism,  combined  with  a  true  princely 
Courtesy  of  inward  nature,  the  visible  rudiments  of  such 
speculation?  But  great  men  are  too  often  unknown,  or  15 
vv^hat  is  worse,  misknown.  Already,  when  we  dreamed  not 
of  it,  the  warp  of  thy  remarkable  Volume  lay  on  the  loom; 
and  silently,  mysterious  shuttles  were  putting-in  the  woof  ! 
How  the  Hofrath  Heuschrecke  is  to  furnish  biograph- 
ical data  in  this  case,  may  be  a  curious  question  ;  the  20 
answer  of  which,  however,  is  happily  not  our  concern,  but 
his.  To  us  it  appeared,  after  repeated  trial,  that  in 
Weissnichtwo,  from  the  archives  or  memories  of  the  best- 
informed  classes,  no  Biography  of  Teufelsdrockh  was  to 
be  gathered ;  not  so  much  as  a  false  one.  He  was  a  25 
stranger  there,  wafted  thither  by  what  is  called  the  course 
of  circumstances ;  concerning  whose  parentage,  birth- 
place, prospects,  or  pursuits,  curiosity  had  indeed  made 
inquiries,  but  satisfied  herself  with  the  most  indistinct 
replies.  For  himself,  he  was  a  man  so  still  and  altogether  30 
unparticipating,  that  to  question  him  even  afar  off  on 
such  particulars  was  a  thing  of  more  than  usual  delicacy: 
besides,  in  his  sly  way,  he  had  ever  some  quaint  turn,  not 
without  its  satirical  edge,  wherewith  to  divert  such  intru- 


14  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

sions,  and  deter  you  from  the  like.  Wits  spoke  of  him 
secretly  as  if  he  were  a  kind  of  Melchizedek,  without 
father  or  mother  of  any  kind ;  sometimes,  with  reference 
to  his  great  historic  and  statistic  knowledge,  and  the  vivid 

5  way  he  had  of  expressing  himself  like  an  eye-witness  of 
distant  transactions  and  scenes,  they  called  him  the 
Ewige  /ude,  Everlasting,  or  as  we  say,  Wandering  Jew. 

To  the  most,  indeed,  he  had  become  not  so  much  a  Man 
as  a  Thing;  which  Thing  doubtless  they  were  accustomed 

lo  to  see,  and  with  satisfaction  ;  but  no  more  thought  of 
accounting  for  than  for  the  fabrication  of  their  daily 
Ange?neifie  Zeitimg,  or  the  domestic  habits  of  the  Sun. 
Both  were  there  and  welcome  ;  the  world  enjoyed  what 
good  was  in  them,  and  thought  no  more  of  the  matter. 

15  The  man  Teufelsdrockh  passed  and  repassed,  in  his  little 
circle,  as  one  of  those  originals  and  nondescripts,  more 
frequent  in  German  Universities  than  elsewhere;  of  whom, 
though  you  see  them  alive,  and  feel  certain  enough  that 
they  must  have  a  History,  no   History  seems  to  be  dis- 

20  coverable ;  or  only  such  as  men  give  of  mountain  rocks 
and  antediluvian  ruins:  That  they  have  been  created  by 
unknown  agencies,  are  in  a  state  of  gradual  decay,  and 
for  the  present  reflect  light  and  resist  pressure  ;  that  is, 
are  visible  and  tangible  objects  in  this  phantasm  world, 

25  where  so  much  other  mystery  is. 

It  was  to  be  remarked  that  though,  by  title  and  diploma, 
Professor  der  Allerley-  Wissenschaft,  or  as  we  should  say  in 
English,  'Professor  of  Things  in  General,'  he  had  never 
delivered  any  Course  ;  perhaps  never  been  incited  thereto 

30  by  any  public  furtherance  or  requisition.  To  all  appear- 
ance, the  enlightened  Government  of  Weissnichtwo,  in 
founding  their  New  University,  imagined  they  had  done 
enough,  if  'in  times  like  ours,'  as  the  half-official  Program 
expressed  it,  *  when  all  things  are,  rapidly  or  slowly,  re- 


REMINISCENCES.  i  ^ 

'solving  themselves  into  Chaos,  a  Professorship  of  this 
'  kind  had  been  established ;  whereby,  as  occasion  called, 
'the  task  of  bodying  somewhat  forth  again  from  such 
'Chaos  might  be,  even  slightly,  facilitated.'  That  actual 
Lectures  should  be  held,  and  Public  Classes  for  the  '  Sci-  5 
ence  of  Things  in  General,'  they  doubtless  considered 
premature  ;  on  which  ground  too  they  had  only  established 
the  Professorship,  nowise  endowed  it ;  so  that  Teufels- 
drockh,  'recommended  by  the  highest  Names,'  had  been 
promoted  thereby  to  a  Name  merely.  10 

Great,  among  the  more  enlightened  classes,  was  the 
admiration  of  this  new  Professorship :  how  an  enlightened 
Government  had  seen  into  the  Want  of  the  Age  {Zeit- 
bedw'fniss)  ;  how  at  length,  instead  of  Denial  and  De- 
struction, we  were  to  have  a  science  of  Affirmation  and  15 
Reconstruction ;  and  Germany  and  Weissnichtwo  were 
where  they  should  be,  in  the  vanguard  of  the  world. 
Considerable  also  was  the  wonder  at  the  new  Professor, 
dropt  opportunely  enough  into  the  nascent  University; 
so  able  to  lecture,  should  occasion  call ;  so  ready  to  hold  20 
his  peace  for  indefinite  periods,  should  an  enlightened 
Government  consider  that  occasion  did  not  call.  But 
such  admiration  and  such  wonder,  being  followed  by  no 
act  to  keep  them  living,  could  last  only  nine  days ;  and 
long  before  our  visit  to  that  scene,  had  quite  died  away.  25 
The  more  cunning  heads  thought  it  was  all  an  expiring 
clutch  at  popularity,  on  the  part  of  a  Minister,  whom 
domestic  embarrassments,  court  intrigues,  old  age,  and 
dropsy  soon  afterwards  finally  drove  from  the  helm. 

As  for  Teufelsdrockh,  except  by  his  nightly  appearances  3° 
at  the  Griine   Gafts,  Weissnichtwo   saw  little  of  him,  felt 
little  of  him.      Here,   over  his   tumbler   of  Gukguk,  he 
sat  reading  Journals  ;  sometimes  contemplatively  looking 
into  the  clouds  of  his  tobacco-pipe,  without  other  visible 


1 6  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

employment:  always,  from  his  mild  ways,  an  agreeable 
phenomenon  there  ;  more  especially  when  he  opened  his 
lips  for  speech ;  on  which  occasions  the  whole  Coffee- 
house would  hush  itself  into  silence,  as  if  sure  to  hear 
5  something  noteworthy.  Nay,  perhaps  to  hear  a  whole 
series  and  river  of  the  most  memorable  utterances ;  such 
as,  when  once  thawed,  he  would  for  hours  indulge  in,  with 
fit  audience  :  and  the  more  memorable,  as  issuing  from  a 
head  apparently  not  more  interested  in  them,  not  more 

lo  conscious  of  them,  than  is  the  sculptured  stone  head  of 
some  public  Fountain,  which  through  its  brass  mouth-tube 
emits  water  to  the  worthy  and  the  unworthy;  careless 
whether  it  be  for  cooking  victuals  or  quenching  conflagra- 
tions ;  indeed,  maintains  the  same  earnest,  assiduous  look, 

15  whether  any  water  be  flowing  or  not. 

To  the  Editor  of  these  sheets,  as  to  a  young  enthusi- 
astic Englishman,  however  unworthy,  Teufelsdrockh 
opened  himself  perhaps  more  than  to  the  most.  Pity 
only  that  we  could  not  then  half  guess  his  importance, 

20  and  scrutinise  him  with  due  power  of  vision  !  We 
enjoyed,  what  not  three  men  in  Weissnichtwo  could 
boast  of,  a  certain  degree  of  access  to  the  Professor's 
private  domicile.  It  was  the  attic  floor  of  the  highest 
house  in  the  Wahngasse ;  and  might  truly  be  called  the 

25  pinnacle  of  Weissnichtwo,  for  it  rose  sheer  up  above  the 
contiguous  roofs,  themselves  rising  from  elevated  ground. 
Moreover,  with  its  windows,  it  looked  towards  all  the 
four  Orte,  or  as  the  Scotch  say,  and  we  ought  to  say, 
Airts :  the  Sitting-room  itself  commanded  three  ;   another 

30  came  to  view  in  the  Schlafgemach  (Bed-room)  at  the 
opposite  end ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  Kitchen,  which 
offered  two,  as  it  were  duplicates^  and  showing  nothing 
new.  So  that  it  was  in  fact  the  speculum  or  watch-tower 
of  Teufelsdrockh ;  wherefrom,  sitting  at  ease,  he  might 


REMINISCENCES.  ly 

see  the  whole  life-circulation  of  that  considerable  City  ; 
the  streets  and  lanes  of  which,  with  all  their  doing  and 
driving  {Thun  iimi  Treibefi),  were  for  the  most  part  visible 
there. 

"  I  look  down   into   all   that   wasp-nest  or  bee-hive,"    5 
have  we  heard  him  say,  "  and  witness  their  wax-laying 
"  and  honey-making,  and  poison-brewing,  and  choking  by 
"  sulphur.     From    the    Palace    esplanade,    where    music 
"  plays   while    Serene   Highness    is    pleased    to    eat   his 
"victuals,  down  to  the  low  lane,  where  in  her  door-sill  10 
"  the  aged  widow,  knitting  for  a  thin  livelihood,  sits  to 
"  feel  the  afternoon  sun,   I  see  it  all ;    for,   except   the 
"  Schlosskirche  weathercock,   no  biped  stands  so  high. 
"  Couriers  arrive  bestrapped  and  bebooted,  bearing  Joy 
"and   Sorrow   bagged-up    in  pouches  of  leather;  there,  15 
"  topladen,  and  with  four  swift  horses,  rolls-in  the  country 
"  Baron    and   his    household ;    here,    on    timber-leg,   the 
"  lamed  Soldier  hops  painfully  along,  begging  alms  :    a 
"  thousand  carriages,  and  wains,  and  cars,  come  tumbling- 
"  in  with   Food,   with    young  Rusticity,   and  other  Raw  20 
"  Produce,  inanimate  or  animate,   and  go  tumbling  out 
"  again  with  Produce  manufactured.     That  living  flood, 
"  pouring  through  these  streets,  of  all  qualities  and  ages, 
"  knowest  thou  whence  it  is  coming,  whither  it  is  going  ? 
''  Aus  der  Ewigkeit,  zu  der  Ewigkeit  hin:  From  Eternity,  ^5 
"  onward    to    Eternity !     These    are    Apparitions :    what 
"  else  }     Are  they  not  souls  rendered  visible  ;  in  Bodies, 
"  that   took    shape    and    will    lose    it,   melting  into  air  t 
"  Their  solid  pavement  is  a  Picture  of  the  Sense  ;  they 
"  walk  on  the  bosom  of  Nothing,  blank  Time  is  behind  30 
"  them  and  before  them.     Or  fanciest  thou,  the  red  and 
"  yellow  Clothes-screen  yonder,  with  spurs  on  its  heels, 
"  and  feather  in  its  crown,  is  but   of  Today,  without  a 
"  Yesterday    or    a   Tomorrow ;    and    had    not   rather  its 


1 8  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

"  Ancestor  alive  when  Hengst  and  Horsa  overran  thy 
"  Island  ?  Friend,  thou  seest  here  a  living  link  in  that 
"  Tissue  of  History,  which  inweaves  all  Being  :  watch 
"  well,  or  it  will  be  past  thee,  and  seen  no  more." 

^^  Ach,  inein  Lieber T'  said  he  once,  at  midnight,  when 
he  had  returned  from  the  Coffee-house  in  rather  earnest 
talk,  "  it  is  a  true  sublimity  to  dwell  here.  These 
'  fringes  of  lamp-light,  struggling  up  through  smoke  and 
'  thousandfold  exhalation,  some  fathoms  into  the  ancient 
'  reign  of  Night,  what  thinks  Bootes  of  them,  as  he  leads 
'his  Hunting-Dogs  over  the  Zenith,  in  their  leash  of 
'  sidereal  fire  ?  That  stifled  hum  of  Midnight,  when 
'  Traffic  has  lain  down  to  rest;  and  the  chariot- wheels  of 
'  Vanity,  still  rolling  here  and  there  through  distant 
'  streets,  are  bearing  her  to  Halls  roofed-in,  and  lighted 
'  to  the  due  pitch  for  her  ;  and  only  Vice  and  Misery,  to 
'  prowl  or  to  moan  like  nightbirds,  are  abroad  ;  that  hum 
'  I  say,  like  the  stertorous,  unquiet  slumber  of  sick  Life, 
'  is  heard  in  Heaven  !  Oh,  under  that  hideous  coverlet 
'  of  vapours,  and  putrefactions,  and  unimaginable  gases, 
'  what  a  Fermenting-vat  lies  simmering  and  hid  !  The 
'  joyful  and  the  sorrowful  are  there  ;  men  are  dying  there, 
'  men  are  being  born,  men  are  praying,  —  on  the  other 
'  side  of  a  brick  partition,  men  are  cursing ;  and  around 
'  them  all  is  the  vast,  void  Night.  The  proud  Grandee 
'  still  lingers  in  his  perfumed  saloons,  or  reposes  within 
'  damask  curtains  ;  Wretchedness  cowers  into  truckle- 
'  beds,  or  shivers  hunger-stricken  into  its  lair  of  straw  :  in 
'  obscure  cellars,  Roiige-et-Noir  languidly  emits  its  voice- 
'  of-destiny  to  haggard  hungry  Villains  ;  while  Councillors 
'  of  State  sit  plotting,  and  playing  their  high  chess-game, 
'  whereof  the  pawns  are  Men.  The  Lover  whispers  his 
'mistress  that  the  coach  is  ready;  and  she,  full  of  hope 
'  and  fear,  glides  down,  to  fly  with  him  over  the  borders : 


REMFNISCENCES.  ig 

the  Thief,  still  more  silently,  sets-to  his  picklocks  and 
crowbars,  or  lurks  in  wait  till  the  watchmen  first  snore 
in  their  boxes.  Gay  mansions,  with  supper-rooms,  and 
dancing-rooms,  are  full  of  light  and  music  and  high- 
swelling  hearts  ;  but,  in  the  Condemned  Cells,  the  pulse  5 
of  life  beats  tremulous  and  faint,  and  bloodshot  eyes 
look-out  through  the  darkness,  which  is  around  and 
within,  for  the  light  of  a  stern  last  morning.  Six  men 
are  to  be  hanged  on  the  morrow  :  comes  no  hammering 
from  the  Rabenstein  ?  —  their  gallows  must  even  now  be  10 
o'  building.  Upwards  of  five-hundred-thousand  two- 
legged  animals  without  feathers  lie  around  us,  in  hori- 
zontal positions;  their  heads  all  in  nightcaps,  and  full 
of  the  foolishest  dreams.  Riot  cries  aloud,  and  staggers 
and  swaggers  in  his  rank  dens  of  shame ;  and  the  1 5 
Mother,  with  streaming  hair,  kneels  over  her  pallid 
dying  infant,  whose  cracked  lips  only  her  tears  now 
moisten.  —  All  these  heaped  and  huddled  together,  with 
nothing  but  a  little  carpentry  and  masonry  between 
them  ;  — .  crammed  in,  like  salted  fish,  in  their  barrel ;  20 
or  weltering,  shall  I  say,  like  an  Egyptian  pitcher  of 
tamed  Vipers,  each  struggling  to  get  its  head  above  the 
others :  stu/i  work  goes  on  under  that  smoke-counterpane ! 
—  But  I,  mem  Werther,  sit  above  it  all ;  I  am  alone 
with  the  Stars."  25 

We  looked  in  his  face  to  see  whether,  in  the  utterance 
of  such  extraordinary  Night-thoughts,  no  feeling  might 
be  traced  there ;  but  with  the  light  we  had,  which  indeed 
was  only  a  single  tallow-light,  and  far  enough  from  the 
window,  nothing  save  that  old  calmness  and  fixedness  30 
was  visible. 

These  were  the  Professor's  talking  seasons:  most  com- 
monly he  spoke  in  mere  monosyllables,  or  sat  altogether 
silent  and  smoked  :  while  the  visitor  had  liberty  either  to 


20  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

say  what  he  listed,  receiving  for  answer  an  occasional 
grunt ;  or  to  look  round  for  a  space,  and  then  take  him- 
self away.  It  was  a  strange  apartment;  full  of  books 
and  tattered  papers,  and  miscellaneous  shreds  of  all  con- 
5  ceivable  substances,  '  united  in  a  common  element  of 
dust.'  Books  lay  on  tables,  and  below  tables ;  here 
fluttered  a  sheet  of  manuscript,  there  a  torn  handkerchief, 
or  nightcap  hastily  thrown  aside  ;  ink-bottles  alternated 
with  bread-crusts,  coffee-pots,  tobacco-boxes,   Periodical 

lo  Literature,  and  Bliicher  Boots.  Old  Lieschen  (Lisekin, 
Liza),  who  was  his  bed-maker  and  stove-lighter,  his 
washer  and  wringer,  cook,  errand-maid,  and  general 
lion's-provider,  and  for  the  rest  a  very  orderly  creature, 
had  no  sovereign  authority  in  this  last  citadel  of  Teufels- 

15  drockh ;  only  some  once  in  the  month,  she  half-forcibly 
made  her  way  thither,  with  broom  and  duster,  and 
(Teufelsdrockh  hastily  saving  his  manuscripts)  effected  a 
partial  clearance,  a  jail-delivery  of  such  lumber  as  was 
not  Literary.     These  were^  her  Ei'dbeben  (Earthquakes), 

20  which  Teufelsdrockh  dreaded  worse  than  the  pestilence  ; 
nevertheless,  to  such  length  he  had  been  forced  to  com- 
ply. Glad  would  he  have  been  to  sit  here  philosophising 
forever,  or  till  the  litter,  by  accumulation,  drove  him  out 
of  doors  :    but  Lieschen  was  his  right-arm,  and  spoon, 

25  and  necessary  of  life,  and  would  not  be  flatly  gainsayed. 
We  can  still  remember  the  ancient  woman:  so  silent  that 
some  thought  her  dumb  ;  deaf  also  you  would  often  have 
supposed  her ;  for  Teufelsdrockh,  and  Teufelsdrockh  only, 
would  she  serve   or   give   heed   to  ;    and   with   him   she 

30  seemed  to  communicate  chiefly  by  signs  ;  if  it  were  not 
rather  by  some  secret  divination  thai  she  guessed  all  his 
wants,  and  supplied  them.  Assiduous  old  dame !  she 
scoured,  and  sorted,  and  swept,  in  her  kitchen,  with  the 
least  possible  violence  to  the  ear ;  yet  all  was  tight  and 


REMINISCENCES.  2 1 

right  there  ;  hot  and  black  came  the  coffee  ever  at  the 
due  moment ;  and  the  speechless  Lieschen  herself  looked 
out  on  you,  from  under  her  clean  white  coif  with  its 
lappets,  through  her  clean  withered  face  and  wrinkles, 
with  a  look  of  helpful  intelligence,  almost  of  benevolence.    5 

Few  strangers,  as  above  hinted,  had  admittance  hither: 
the  only  one  we  ever  saw  there,  ourselves  excepted,  was 
the  Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  already  known,  by  name  and 
expectation,  to  the  readers  of  these  pages.  To  us,  at  that 
period,  Herr  Heuschrecke  seemed  one  of  those  purse-  10 
mouthed,  crane-necked,  clean-brushed  pacific  individuals, 
perhaps  sufficiently  distinguished  in  society  by  this  fact, 
that,  in  dry  weather  or  in  wet,  '  they  never  appear  with- 
out their  umbrella.'  Had  we  not  known  with  what '  little 
wisdom  '  the  world  is  governed  ;  and  how,  in  Germany  as  15 
elsewhere,  the  ninety-and-nine  Public  Men  can  for  most 
part  be  but  mute  train-bearers  to  the  hundredth,  perhaps 
but  stalking-horses  and  willing  or  unwilling  dupes,  —  it 
might  have  seemed  wonderful  how  Herr  Heuschrecke 
should  be  named  a  Rath,  or  Councillor,  and  Counsellor,  20 
even  in  Weissnichtwo.  What  counsel  to  any  man,  or  to 
any  woman,  could  this  particular  Hofrath  give ;  in  whose 
loose,  zigzag  figure  ;  in  whose  thin  visage,  as  it  went 
jerking  to  and  fro,  in  minute  incessant  fluctuation,  —  you 
traced  rather  confusion  worse  confounded ;  at  most,  25 
Timidity  and  physical  Cold  ?  Some  indeed  said  withal, 
he  was  '  the  very  Spirit  of  Love  embodied  ' :  blue  earnest 
eyes,  full  of  sadness  and  kindness  ;  purse  ever  open,  and 
so  forth  ;  the  whole  of  which,  we  shall  now  hope,  for  many 
reasons,  was  not  quite  groundless.  Nevertheless  friend  30 
Teufelsdrockh's  outline,  who  indeed  handled  the  burin 
like  few  in  these  cases,  was  probably  the  best :  Er  hat 
Gemiith  imd  Geist,  hat  wenigstetis  gehabt,  doch  ohue  Organ, 
ohne  Schicksals-Gunst;  ist  gegenwdrtig  abcr  halb-zcrriittety 


2  2  SARTOK   RESARTUS. 

halb-erstarrt^  "  He  has  heart  and  talent,  at  least  has  had 
"  such,  yet  without  fit  mode  of  utterance,  or  favour  of 
"  Fortune  ;  and  so  is  now  half-cracked,  half-congealed." 
—  What  the  Hofrath  shall  think  of  this  when  he  sees  it, 
5  readers  may  wonder:  we,  safe  in  the  stronghold  of  His- 
torical Fidelity,  are  Careless. 

The  main  point,  doubtless,  for  us  all,  is  his  love  of 
Teufelsdrockh,  which  indeed  was  also  by  far  the  most 
decisive  feature  of  Heuschrecke  himself.    We  are  enabled 

10  to  assert  that  he  hung  on  the  Professor  with  the  fondness 
of  a  Boswell  for  his  Johnson.  And  perhaps  with  the  like 
return  ;  for  Teufelsdrockh  treated  his  gaunt  admirer  with 
little  outward  regard,  as  some  half-rational  or  altogether 
irrational  friend,  and  at  best  loved  him  out  of  gratitude 

13  and  by  habit.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  curious  to 
observe  with  what  reverent  kindness,  and  a  sort  of 
fatherly  protection,  our  Hofrath,  being  the  elder,  richer, 
and  as  he  fondly  imagined  far  more  practically  influential 
of  the  two,  looked  and  tended  on  his  little  Sage,  whom 

20  he  seemed  to  consider  as  a  living  oracle.  Let  but 
Teufelsdrockh  open  his  mouth,  Heuschrecke's  also  un- 
puckered  itself  into  a  free  doorway,  besides  his  being  all 
eye  and  all  ear,  so  that  nothing  might  be  lost  :  and  then, 
at  every  pause  in  the  harangue,  he  gurgled-out  his  pursy 

25  chuckle  of  a  cough-laugh  (for  the  machinery  of  laughter 
took  some  time  to  get  in  motion,  and  seemed  crank  and 
slack),  or  else  his  twanging  nasal.  Bravo  !  Das  glaub''  ich  ; 
in  either  case,  by  way  of  heartiest  approval.  In  short, 
if    Teufelsdrockh    was    Dalai- Lama,    of    which,   except 

30  perhaps  in  his  self-seclusion,  and  god-like  Indifference, 
there  was  no  symptom,  then  might  Heuschrecke  pass 
for  his  chief  Talapoin,  to  whom  no  dough-pill  he  could 
knead  and  publish  was  other  than  medicinal  and 
sacred. 


CHA  RA  C  TERIS  7VCS.  2  3 

In  such  environment,  social,  domestic,  physical,  did 
Teufelsdrockh,  at  the  time  of  our  acquaintance,  and 
most  likely  does  he  still,  live  and  meditate.  Here, 
perched-up  in  his  high  Wahngasse  watch-tower,  and  often, 
in  solitude,  outwatching  the  Bear,  it  was  that  the  indom-  5 
itable  Inquirer  fought  all  his  battles  with  Dulness  and 
Darkness ;  here,  in  all  probability,  that  he  wrote  this 
surprising  Volume  on  Clothes.  Additional  particulars : 
of  his  age,  which  was  of  that  standing  middle  sort  you 
could  only  guess  at ;  of  his  wide  surtout ;  the  colour  of  10 
his  trousers,  fashion  of  his  broad-brimmed  steeple-hat, 
and  so  forth,  we  might  report,  but  do  not.  The  Wisest 
truly  is,  in  these  times,  the  Greatest ;  so  that  an  enlight- 
ened curiosity,  leaving  Kings  and  suchlike  to  rest  very 
much  on  their  own  basis,  turns  more  and  more  to  the  15 
Philosophic  Class :  nevertheless,  what  reader  expects 
that,  with  all  our  writing  and  reporting,  Teufelsdrockh 
could  be  brought  home  to  him,  till  once  the  Documents 
arrive  ?  His  Life,  Fortunes,  and  Bodily  Presence,  are  as 
yet  hidden  from  us,  or  matter  only  of  faint  conjecture.  20 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not  his  Soul  lie  enclosed  in  pi 

this  remarkable  Volume,   much  more  truly  than  Pedro  ^  n0^' 
Garcia's  did  in  the  buried  Bag  of  Doubloons  ?     To  the 
soul  of  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  to  his  opinions,  namely, 
on  the  '  Origin   and  Influence  of  Clothes,'  we  for  the  25 
present  gladly  return. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS. 


It  were  a  piece  of  vain  flattery  to  pretend  that  this 
Work  on  Clothes  entirely  contents  us ;  that  it  is  not,  like 


24 


SA  A"  TO  A'    RKSA  A'  TUS. 


all  works  of  genius,  like  the  very  Sun,  which,  though  the 
highest  published  Creation,  or  work  of  genius,  has  never- 
theless black  spots  and  troubled  nebulosities  amid  its 
effulgence,  —  a  mixture  of  insight,  inspiration,  with  dul- 
5  ness,  double-vision,  and  even  utter  blindness. 

Without  committing  ourselves  to  those  enthusiastic 
praises  and  prophesyings  of  the  Weissnichtwo'' sche  A7izei- 
gc?',  we  admitted  that  the  Book  had  in  a  high  degree 
excited  us  to  self-activity,  which  is  the  best  effect  of  any 

lo  book ;  that  it  had  even  operated  changes  in  our  way  of 
thought ;  nay,  that  it  promised  to  prove,  as  it  were,  the 
opening  of  a  new  mine-shaft,  wherein  the  whole  w'orld  of 
Speculation  might  henceforth  dig  to  unkno^vn  depths. 
More  specially  it  may  now  be  declared  that  Professor 

15  Teufelsdrockh's  acquirements,  patience  of  research,  phil- 
osophic and  even  poetic  vigour,  are  here  made  indisputably 
manifest ;  and  unhappily  no  less  his  prolixity  and  tortu- 
osity and  manifold  ineptitude ;  that,  on  the  whole,  as  in 
opening  new  mine-shafts  is  not    unreasonable,  there  is 

20  much  rubbish  in  his  Book,  though  likewise  specimens  of 
almost  invaluable  ore.  A  paramount  popularity  in  Eng- 
land we  cannot  promise  him.  Apart  from  the  choice  of 
such  a  topic  as  Clothes,  too  often  the  manner  of  treating 
it   betokens    in    the    Author    a    rusticity    and    academic 

25  seclusion,  unblamable,  indeed  inevitable  in  a  German, 
but  fatal  to  his  success  with  our  public. 

Of  good  society  Teufelsdrockh  appears  to  have  seen 
little,  or  has  mostly  forgotten  what  he  saw.  He  speaks- 
out  with^  strange  plainness  ;  calls  many  things  by  their 

30  mere  dictionary-names.  To  him  the  Upholsterer  is  no 
Pontiff,  neither  is  any  Drawing-room  a  Temple,  were  it 
never  so  begilt  and  overhung :  '  a  whole  immensity  of 
'  Brussels  carpets,  and  pier  glasses,  and  or-molu,'  as  he 
himself   expresses  it,  '  cannot  hide  from  me  that  such 


■     CHA  RA  C  TEN  IS  TICS.  2  5 

'  Drawing-room   is    simply   a   section   of    Infinite   Space, 
'  where  so  many  God-created  Souls  do  for  the  time  meet 
'together.'     To   Teufelsdrockh  the  highest  Duchess  is 
respectable,  is  venerable  ;  but  nowise  for  her  pearl  brace- 
lets, and  Malines  laces  :  in  his  eyes,  the  star  of  a  Lord  is    5 
little  less  and  little  more  than  the  broad  button  of  Bir- 
mingham spelter  in  a  Clown's  smock ;  '  each  is  an  imple- 
'  ment,'  he  says,  '  in  its  kind  ;  a  tag  for  hooking-together ; 
'  and,  for  the  rest,  was  dug  from  the  earth  and  hammered 
*on  a  stithy  before  smith's  fingers.'     Thus  does  the  Pro-  10 
fessor  look  in  men's  faces  with  a  strange  impartiality,  a 
strange  scientific  freedom  ;  like  a  man  unversed  in  the 
higher  circles,  like  a  man  dropped  thither  from  the  Moon.    . 
Rightly    considered,    it    is    in    this    peculiarity,    running 
through  his  whole  system  of  thought,  that  all  these  short-  1 5 
comings,  over-shootings,  and  multiform  perversities,  take 
rise :    if   indeed    they   have   not  a   second    source,    also 
natural  enough,  in  his  Transcendental  Philosophies,  and 
humour  of  looking  at  all  Matter  and  Material  things  as 
Spirit ;  whereby  truly  his  case  were  but  the  more  hope-  20 
less,  the  more  lamentable. 

To  the  Thinkers  of  this  nation,  however,  of  which  class 
it  is  firmly  believed  there  are  individuals  yet  extant,  we 
can  safely  recommend  the  Work :  nay,  who  knows  but 
among  the  fashionable  ranks  too,  if  it  be  true,  as  Teufels-  25 
drockh  maintains,  that  '  within  the  most  starched  cravat 
'  there  passes  a  windpipe  and  weasand,  and  under  the 
'  thickliest  embroidered  waistcoat  beats  a  heart,'  —  the 
force  of  that  rapt  earnestness  may  be  felt,  and  here  and 
there  an  arrow  of  the  soul  pierce  through.  In  our  wild  30 
Seer,  shaggy,  unkempt,  like  a  Baptist  living  on  locusts 
and  wild  honey,  there  is  an  untutored  energy,  a  silent,  as 
it  were  unconscious,  strength,  which,  except  in  the  higher 
walks  of  Literature,  must  be  rare.     Many  a  deep  glance, 


2  6  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

and  often  with  unspeakable  precision,  has  he  cast  into 
mysterious  Nature,  and  the  still  more  mysterious  Life  of 
Man.  Wonderful  it  is  with  what  cutting  words,  now  and 
then,  he  severs  asunder  the  confusion  ;  sheers  down, 
5  were  it  furlongs  deep,  into  the  true  centre  of  the  matter ; 
and  there  not  only  hits  the  nail  on  the  head,  but  with 
crushing  force  smites  it  home,  and  buries  it.  —  On  the 
other  hand,  let  us  be  free  to  admit,  he  is  the  most 
unequal  writer  breathing.     Often  after  some  such  feat, 

lo  he  will  play  truant  for  long  pages,  and  go  dawdling  and 
dreaming,  and  mumbling  and  maundering  the  merest 
commonplaces,  as  if  he  were  asleep  with  eyes  open,  which 
indeed  he  is. 

Of  his  boundless  Learning,  and  how  all  reading  and 

15  literature  in  most  known  tongues,  from  Sa?ichoniathon  to 
Dr.  Linga7'd^  from  your  Oriental  S/iasters,  and  Talmiids, 
and  Ko?'aJis,  with  Cassini's  Siainese  Tables^  and  Laplace's 
Mecanique  Celeste  down  to  Robi7ison  Crusoe  and  the  Belfast 
Town  and  Country  Almafiack,  are  familiar  to  him,  —  we 

20  shall  say  nothing :  for  unexampled  as  it  is  with  us,  to  the 
Germans  such  universality  of  study  passes  without  wonder, 
as  a  thing  commendable,  indeed,  but  natural,  indispens-. 
able,  and  there  of  course.  A  man  that  devotes  his  life 
to  learning,  shall  he  not  be  learned  ? 

25  In  respect  of  style  our  Author  manifests  the  same 
genial  capability,  marred  too  often  by  the  same  rudeness, 
inequality,  and  apparent  want  of  intercourse  with  the 
higher  classes.  Occasionally,  as  above  hinted,  we  find 
consummate    vigour,    a    true    inspiration ;    his    burning 

30  thoughts  step  forth  in  fit  burning  Words,  like  so  many 
full-formed  Minervas,  issuing  amid  flame  and  splendour 
from  Jove's  head  ;  a  rich,  idiomatic  diction,  picturesque 
allusions,  fiery  poetic  emphasis,  or  quaint  tricksy  turns ; 
all  the  graces  and  terrors  of  a  wild  Imagination,  wedded 


CHARACTERISTICS.  27 

to  the  clearest  Intellect,  alternate  in  beautiful  vicissitude. 
Were  it  not  that  sheer  sleeping  and  soporific  passages;  \ 
circumlocutions,  repetitions,  touches  even  of  pure  doting  , 

jargon,   so   often    intervene  !     On   the  whole.    Professor        ^^ 
Teufelsdrockh  is  not  a  cultivated  writer. ^Of  his  sentences    5         "^ 
perhaps   not  more   than   nine-tenths    stand    straight    on 
their  legs  ;  the  remainder  are  in  quite  angular  attitudes, 
buttressed-up  by  props  (of  parentheses  and  dashes),  and 
ever  with  this  or  the  other  tagrag  hanging  from  them  ; 
a   few   even    sprawl-out    helplessly   on    all    sides,    quite  10 
broken-backed  and  dismembered.     Nevertheless,  in  al- 
most his  very  worst  moods,  there  lies  in  him  a  singular 
attraction.     A  wild  tone  pervades  the  whole  utterance  of 
the  man,  like  its    keynote  and  regulator ;  now  screwing 
itself  aloft  as  into  the  Song  of  Spirits,  or  else  the  shrill  15 
mockery  of  Fiends  ;  now  sinking  in  cadences,  not  without 
melodious  heartiness,  though  sometimes  abrupt  enough, 
into    the    common    pitch,    when    we   hear   it    only  as  a 
monotonous  hum  ;    of  which  hum  the  true  character  is 
extremely  difficult  to  fix.    Up  to  this  hour  we  have  never  20 
fully  satisfied  ourselves  whether  it  is  a  tone  and  hum  of 
real  Humour,  which  we  reckon  among  the  very  highest 
qualities  of  genius,  or  some  echo  of  mere  Insanity  and 
Inanity,  which  doubtless  ranks  below  the  very  lowest. 

Under  a  like  difficulty,  in  spite  even  of  our  personal  25 
intercourse,  do  we  still  lie  with  regard  to  the  Professor's 
moral  feeling.  Gleams  of  an  ethereal  love  burst  forth 
from  him,  soft  wailings  of  infinite  pity;  he  could  clasp 
the  whole  Universe  into  his  bosom,  and  keep  it  warm  ;  it 
seems  as  if  under  that  rude  exterior  there  dwelt  a  very  3° 
seraph.  Then  again  he  is  so  sly  and  still,  so  imper- 
turbably  saturnine  ;  shows  such  indifference,  malign  cool- 
ness towards  all  that  men  strive  after;  and  ever  with 
some  half-visible  wrinkle  of  a  bitter  sardonic  humour,  if 


28  SARTOR   RESARTdS. 

indeed  it  be  not  mere  stolid  callousness,  —  that  you  look 
on  him  almost  with  a  shudder,  as  on  some  incarnate 
Mephistopheles,  to  whom  this  great  terrestrial  and  celes- 
tial Round,  after  all,  w^ere  but  some  huge  foolish  Whirligig, 
5  where  kings  and  beggars,  and  angels  and  demons,  and 
stars  and  street-sweepings,  were  chaotically  whirled,  in 
which  only  children  could  take  interest.  His  look,  as  we 
mentioned,  is  probably  the  gravest  ever  seen :  yet  it  is 
not  of  that  cast-iron  gravity  frequent  enough  among  our 

10  own  Chancery  suitors  ;  but  rather  the  gravity  as  of  some 

^  silent,  high-encircled  mountain-pool,  perhaps  the  crater 
of  an  extinct  volcano ;  into  whose  black  deeps  you  fear 
to  gaze  :  those  eyes,  those  lights  that  sparkle  in  it,  may 
indeed  be  reflexes  of  the  heavenly  'Stars,   but  perhaps 

15  also  glances  from  the  region  of  Nether  Fire  ! 

Certainly  a  most  involved,  self-secluded,  altogether 
enigmatic  nature,  this  of  Teufelsdrockh  !  Here,  however, 
we  gladly  recall  to  mind  that  once  we  saw  him  hiicgk ; 
once  only,  perhaps  it  was  the  first  and  last  time  in  his 

20  life  ;  but  then  such  a  peal  of  laughter,  enough  to  have 
awakened  the  Seven  Sleepers  !  It  was  of  Jean  Paul's 
doing :  some  single  billow  in  that  vast  World-Mahlstrom 
of  Humour,  with  its  heaven-kissing  coruscations,  which  is 
now,   alas,   all   congealed  in   the   frost   of   death !      The 

25  large-bodied  Poet  and  the  small,  both  large  enough  in 
soul,  sat  talking  miscellaneously  together,  the  present 
Editor  being  privileged  to  listen ;  and  now  Paul,  in  his 
serious  way,  was  giving  one  of  those  inimitable  '  Extra- 
'  harangues  ' ;  and,  as  it  chanced.  On  the  Proposal  for  a 

30  Cast-77ietal  King :  gradually  a  light  kindled  in  our  Pro- 
fessor's eyes  and  face,  a  beaming,  mantling,  loveliest 
light ;  through  those  murky  features,  a  radiant  ever-young 
Apollo  looked ;  and  he  burst  forth  like  the  neighing  of 
all  Tattersall's,  —  tears  streaming  down  his  cheeks,  pipe 


CHA  RA  C  TERIS  TICS.  2  9 

held  aloft,  foot  clutched  into  the  air,  —  loud,  long-con- 
tinuing, uncontrollable ;  a  laugh  not  of  the  face  and 
diaphragm  only,  but  of  the  whole  man  from  head  to  heel. 
The  present  Editor,  who  laughed  indeed,  yet  with  measure, 
began  to  fear  all  was  not  right :  however,  Teufelsdrockh  5 
composed  himself,  and  sank  into  his  old  stilness ;  on  his 
inscrutable  countenance  there  was,  if  anything,  a  slight 
look  of  shame  ;  and  Richter  himself  could  not  rouse  him 
again.  Readers  who  have  any  tincture  of  Psychology 
know  how  much  is  to  be  inferred  from  this  ;  and  that  no  10 
man  who  has  once  heartily  and  wholly  laughed  can  be 
altogether  irreclaimably  bad.  How  much  lies  in  Laughter: 
the  cipher-key,  wherewith  we  decipher  the  whole  man  ! 
Some  men  wear  an  everlasting  barren  simper ;  in  the 
smile  of  others  lies  a  cold  glitter  as  of  ice  :  the  fewest  are  15 
able  to  laugh,  what  can  be  called  laughing,  but  only  sniff 
and  titter  and  snigger  from  the  throat  outward  ;  or  at 
best,  produce  some  whiffling  husky  cachinnation,  as  if  they 
were  laughing  through  wool ;  of  none  such  comes  good. 
The  man  who  cannot  laugh  is  not  only  fit  for  treasons,  20 
stratagems,  and  spoils  ;  but  his  whole  life  is  already  a 
treason  and  a  stratagem. 

Considered  as  an  author,  Herr  Teufelsdrockh  has  one 
scarcely  pardonable  fault,  doubtless  his  worst :  an  almost 
total  want  of  arrangement.  In  this  remarkable  Volume,  25 
it  is  true,  his  adherence  to  the  mere  course  of  Time  pro- 
duces, through  the  Narrative  portions,  a  certain  show  of 
outward  method  ;  but  of  true  logical  method  and  sequence 
there  is  too  little.  Apart  from  its  multifarious  sections 
and  subdivisions,  the  Work  naturally  falls  into  two  Parts  ;  30 
a  Historical-Descriptive,  and  a  Philosophical-Speculative  : 
but  falls,  unhappily,  by  no  firm  line  of  demarcation  ;  in 
that  labyrinthic  combination,  each  Part  overlaps,  and 
indents,  and  indeed  runs  quite  through  the  other.     Many 


3° 


SARTOI^   RESARTUS. 


sections  are  of  a  debatable  rubric,  or  even  quite  nonde- 
script and  unnameable  ;  whereby  the  Book  not  only  loses 
in  accessibility,  but  too  often  distresses  us  like  some  mad 
banquet,  wherein  all  courses'  had  been  confounded,  and 
5  fish  and  flesh,  soup  and  solid,  oyster-sauce,  lettuces, 
Rhine-wine  and  French  mustard,  were  hurled  into  one 
huge  tureen  or  trough,  and  the  hungry  Public  invited  to 
help  itself.  To  bring  what  order  we  can  out  of  this 
Chaos  shall  be  part  of  our  endeavour. 


CHAPTER    V. 


THE    WORLD    IN    CLOTHES. 


lo  'As  Montesquieu  wrote  a  Spirit  of  Laws  ^^  observes  our 
Professor, '  so  could  I  write  a  Spirit  of  Clothes;  thus,  with 
an  ''Esp7'it  des  Loix,  properly  an  Esprit  de  Coutiwtes,  we 
'should  have  an  Espj'it  de  Costumes.  For  neither  in 
'  tailoring  nor  in  legislating  does  man  proceed  by  mere 

15  '  Accident,  but  the  hand  is  ever  guided  on  by  mysterious 
'  operations  of  the  mind.  In  all  his  Modes,  and  habilatory 
'  endeavours,  an  Architectural  Idea  will  be  found  lurking ; 
'his  Body  and  the  Cloth  are  the  site  and  materials 
'  whereon  and  whereby  his  beautiful  edifice,  of  a  Person, 

20  '  is  to  be  built.  Whether  he  flow  gracefully  out  in  folded 
'mantles,  based  on  light  sandals  ;  tower-up  in  high  head- 
'  gear,  from  amid  peaks,  spangles  and  bell-girdles  ;  swell- 
'  out  in  starched  ruffs,  buckram  stuffings  and  monstrous 
'  tuberosities  ;  or  girth  himself  into  separate  sections,  and 

25  'front  the  world  an  Agglomeration  of  four  limbs, — will 
'depend  on  the  nature  of  such  Architectural  Idea: 
^whether    Grecian,    Gothic,    Later-Gothic,   or    altogether 


THE    WORLD   IN  CLOTHES. 


31 


'  Modern,  and  Parisian  or  Anglo-Dandiacal.  Again, 
'  what  meaning  lies  in  Colour  !  From  the  soberest  drab 
'  to  the  high-flaming  scarlet,  spiritual  idiosyncrasies  unfold 
'  themselves  in  choice  of  Colour  :  if  the  Cut  betoken  Intel- 
'  lect  and  Talent,  so  does  the  Colour  betoken  Temper  and 
'  Heart.  In  all  which,  among  nations  as  among  indi- 
'  viduals,  there  is  an  incessant,  indubitable,  though  in- 
*  finitely  complex  working  of  Cause  and  Effect :  every 
'  snip  of  the.  Scissors  has  been  regulated  and  prescribed 
'by  ever-active  Influences,  which  doubtless  to  Intelli- 
'gences   of  a   superior  order   are    neither   invisible    nor 


illegible. 


'  For  such  superior  Intelligences  a  Cause-and- Effect 
'  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  as  of  Laws,  were  probably  a 
'  comfortable  winter-evening  entertainment :  nevertheless,  15 
'for  inferior  Intelligences,  like  men,  such  Philosophies 
'  have  always  seemed  to  me  uninstructive  enough.  Nay, 
'  what  is  your  Montesquieu  himself  but  a  clever  infant 
'  spelling  Letters  from  a  hieroglyphical  prophetic  Book, 
'  the  lexicon  of  which  lies  in  Eternity,  in  Heaven  ?  —  Let  20 
*  any  Cause-and- Effect  Philosopher  explain,  not  why  I 
'  wear  such  and  such  a  Garment,  obey  such  and  such  a 
'  Law ;  but  even  why  /  am  //^r<?,  to  wear  and  obey  any 
'  thing  !  —  Much,  therefore,  if  not  the  whole,  of  that  same 
'  Spi7'it  of  Clothes  I  shall  suppress,  as  hypothetical,  25 
'  ineffectual,  and  even  impertinent :  naked  Facts,  and 
'  Deductions  drawn  therefrom  in  quite  another  than  that 
'  omniscient  style,  are  my  humbler  and  proper  province.' 

Acting  on  which  prudent  restriction,  Teufelsdrockh  has 
nevertheless  contrived  to  take-in  a  well-nigh  boundless  3° 
extent  of  field  ;  at  least,  the  boundaries  too  often  lie 
quite  beyond  our  horizon.  Selection  being  indispensable, 
we  shall  here  glance-over  his  First  Part  only  in  the  most 
cursory    manner.      This    First    Part    is,    no    doubt,    dis- 


32  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

tinguished  by  omnivorous  learning,  and  utmost  patience 
and  fairness  :  at  the  same  time,  in  its  results  and  delinea- 
tions, it  is  much  more  likely  to  interest  the  Compilers  of 
some  Libt-ary  of  General,  Entertaining,  Useful,  or  even 
5  Useless  Knowledge  than  the  miscellaneous  readers  of 
these  pages.  Was  it  this  Part  of  the  Book  which  Heu- 
schrecke  had  in  view,  when  he  recommended  us  to  that 
joint-stock  vehicle  of  publication,  '  at  present  the  glory 
'  of  British  Literature '  ?     If  so,  the  Library .  Editors  are 

lo  welcome  to  dig  in  it  for  their  own  behoof. 

To  the  First  Chapter,  which  turns  on  Paradise  and 
Fig-leaves,  and  leads  us  into  interminable  disquisitions 
of  a  mythological,  metaphorical,  cabalistico-sartorial  and 
quite  antediluvian  cast,  we  shall  content  ourselves  with 

IS  giving  an  unconcerned  approval.  Still  less  have  we  to 
do  with  '  Lilis,  Adam's  first  wife,  whom,  according  to  the 

*  Talmudists,  he  had  before  Eve,  and  who  bore  him,  in 

*  that  wedlock,  the  whole  progeny  of  aerial,  aquatic,  and 
'terrestrial  Devils,'  — very  needlessly,  we  think.    On  this 

20  portion  of  the  Work,  with  its  profound  glances  into  the 
Adam-Kadmo7i,  or  Primeval  Element,  here  strangely 
brought  into  relation  with  the  Nifi  and  Miispel  (Darkness 
and  Light)  of  the  antique  North,  it  may  be  enough  to 
say   that    its    correctness    of    deduction,    and    depth    of 

25  Talmudic  and  Rabbinical  lore  have  filled  perhaps  not 
the  worst  Hebraist  in  Britain  with  something  like  aston- 
ishment. 

But,  quitting  this  twilight  region,  Teufelsdrockh  hastens 
from  the  Tower  of   Babel,  to   follow   the   dispersion   of 

30  Mankind  over  the  whole  habitable  and  habilable  globe. 
Walking  by  the  light  of  Oriental,  Pelasgic,  Scandinavian, 
Egyptian,  Otaheitean,  Ancient  and  Modern  researches  of 
every  conceivable  kind,  he  strives  to  give  us  in  compressed 
shape  (as  the  Niirnbergers  give  an  Orhis  PicUis)  an  Orhis 


THE    WORLD   IN  CLOTHES.  33 

Vestitus ;  or  view  of  the  costumes  of  all  mankind,  in  all 
countries,  in  all  times.     It  is  here  that  to  the  Antiquarian, 
to   the    Historian,   we   can   triumphantly  say  :    Fall    to  ! 
Here  is  Learning  :  an  irregular  Treasury,  if  you  will ;  but 
inexhaustible   as   the   Hoard   of    King   Nibelung,   which    5 
twelve  wagons  in  twelve  days,  at  the  rate  of  three  journeys 
a  day,  could  not  carry  off.     Sheepskin  cloaks  and  wam- 
pum belts  ;  phylacteries,  stoles,  albs ;  chlamydes,  togas, 
Chinese     silks,    Afghaun     shawls,    trunk-hose,    leather  1^, 
breeches,  Celtic  philibegs  (though  breeches,  as  the  name  10 
Gallia  Braccata  indicates,  are  the  more  ancient).  Hussar 
cloaks,  Vandyke   tippets,  ruffs,  fardingales,  are   brought 
vividly  before  us,  —  even  the  Kilmarnock  nightcap  is  not 
forgotten.     For  most  part  too  we  must  admit  that  the 
Learning,  heterogeneous  as  it  is,  and  tumbled-down  quite  15 
pell-mell,  is  true  concentrated  and  purified  Learning,  the 
drossy  parts  smelted  out  and  thrown  aside. 

Philosophical    reflections    intervene,    and    sometimes 
touching  pictures  of  human  life.     Of  this  sort  the  follow- 
ing has  surprised  us.     The  first  purpose  of  clothes,  as  20 
our  Professor  imagines,  was  not  warmth  or  decency,  but 
ornament.     '  Miserable   indeed,'  says  he,  '  was  the  con- 

*  dition  of  the  Aboriginal  Savage,  glaring  fiercely  from 
'  under  his  fleece  of  hair,  which  with  the  beard  reached 

'  down  to  his  loins,  and   hung  round  him   like  a  matted  25 
'cloak  ;  the  rest  of  his  body  sheeted  in  its  thick  natural 
'fell.     He   loitered   in   the   sunny  glades   of  the  forest, 
'  living    on   wild-fruits ;    or,   as   the   ancient   Caledonian, 
'  squatted  himself  in  morasses,  lurking  for  his  bestial  or 

*  human  prey  ;    without  implements,   without  arms,  save  30 
*the  ball- of  heavy  Flint,  to  which,  that  his  sole  possession 

'  and  defence  might  not  be  lost,  he  had  attached  a  long 
'  cord  of  plaited  thongs  ;  thereby  recovering  as  well  as 
'hurling  it  with  deadly  unerring  skill.      Nevertheless,  the 


24  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

pains  of  Hunger  and  Revenge  once  satisfied,  his  next 
care  was  not  Comfort  but  Decoration  {Putz).  Warmth 
he  found  in  the  toils  of  the  chase  ;  or  amid  dried  leaves 
in  his  hollow  tree,  in  his  bark  shed,  or  natural  grotto  : 
but  for  Decoration  he  must  have  Clothes.  Nay,  among 
wild  people,  we  find  tattooing  and  painting  even  prior  to 
Clothes.  The  first  spiritual  want  of  a  barbarous  man  is 
Decoration,  as  indeed  we  still  see  among  the  barbarous 
classes  in  civilised  countries. 

'  Reader,  the  heaven-inspired  melodious  Singer;  loftiest 
Serene  Highness  ;  nay,  thy  own  amber-locked,  snow-and- 
rose-bloom  Maiden,  worthy  to  glide  sylphlike  almost  on 
air,  whom  thou  lovest,  worshippest  as  a  divine  Presence, 
which,  indeed,  symbolically  taken,  she  is, — has  descended, 
like  thyself,  from  that  same  hair-mantled,  flint-hurling 
Aboriginal  Anthropophagus  !  Out  of  the  eater  cometh 
forth  meat ;  out  of  the  strong  cometh  forth  sweetness. 
What  changes  are  wrought,  not  by  Time,  yet  in  Time  ! 
For  not  Mankind  only,  but  all  that  Mankind  does  or 
beholds,  is  in  continual  growth,  regenesis  and  self- 
perfecting  vitality.  Cast  forth  thy  Act,  thy  Word,  into 
the  ever-living,  ever-working  Universe  :  it  is  a  seed-grain 
that  cannot  die ;  unnoticed  today  (says  one),  it  will  be 
found  flourishing  as  a  Banyan-grove  (perhaps,  alas,  as  a 
Hemlock-forest !)  after  a  thousand  years. 

'  He  who  first  shortened  the  labour  of  Copyists  by 
device  of  Movable  Types  was  disbanding  hired  Armies, 
and  cashiering  most  Kings  and  Senates,  and  creating  a 
whole  new  Democratic  world  :  he  had  invented  the  Art 
of  Printing.  The  first  ground  handful  of  Nitre,  Sulphur, 
and  Charcoal  drove  Monk  Schwartz's  pestle  through  the 
ceiling ;  what  will  the  last  do  ?  Achieve  the  final  undis- 
puted prostration  of  Force  under  Thought,  of  Animal 
courage    under    Spiritual.      A  simple  invention  it  was  in 


THE    WORLD    IN  CLOTHES.  3^ 

the  old-world  Grazier, — sick  of  lugging  his  slow  Ox 
about  the  country  till  he  got  it  bartered  for  corn  or  oil, 
—  to  take  a  piece  of  Leather,  and  thereon  scratch  or 
stamp  the  mere  Figure  of  an  Ox  (or  Pecus) ;  put  it  in 
his  pocket,  and  call  it  Feamia,  Money.  Yet  hereby  did 
Barter  grow  Sale,  the  Leather  Money  is  now  Golden 
and  Paper,  and  all  miracles  have  been  out-miracled  : 
for  there  are  Rothschilds  and  English  National  Debts ; 
and  whoso  has  sixpence  is  Sovereign  (to  the  length  of 
sixpence)  over  all  men  ;  commands  cooks  to  feed  him, 
philosophers  to  teach  him,  kings  to  mount  guard  over 
him  —  to  the  length  of  sixpence.  —  Clothes,  too,  which 
began  in  foolishest  love  of  Ornament,  what  have  they 
not  become  !  Increased  Security,  and  pleasurable  Heat 
soon  followed :  but  what  of  these  .^  Shame,  divine 
Shame  (^Schaam,  Modesty),  as  yet  a  stranger  to  the 
Anthropophagous  bosom,  arose  there  mysteriously  under 
Clothes ;  a  mystic,  grove-encircled  shrine  for  the  Holy 
in  man.  Clothes  gave  us  individuality,  distinctions,"" 
social  polity ;  Clothes  have  made  Men  of  us  ;  they  are 
threatening  to  make  Clothes-screens  of  us. 

'  But,  on  the  whole,'  continues  our  eloquent  Professor, 
Man  is  a  Tool-using  Animal  {Handthie^-endes  Thicr). 
Weak  in  himself,  and  of  small  stature,  he  stands  on  a 
basis,  at  most  for  the  flattest-soled,  of  some  half-square  25 
foot,  insecurely  enough ;  has  to  straddle  out  his  legs, 
lest  the  very  wind  supplant  him.  Feeblest  of  bipeds  ! 
Three  quintals  are  a  crushing  load  for  him ;  the  steer 
of  the  meadow  tosses  him  aloft,  like  a  waste  rag. 
Nevertheless,  he  can  use  Tools,  can  devise  Tools  :  with  30 
these  the  granite  mountain  melts  into  light  dust  before 
him ;  he  kneads  glowing  iron,  as  if  it  were  soft 
paste ;  seas  are  his  smooth  highway,  winds  and  fire 
his    unwearying    steeds.       Nowhere    do    you    find    him 


36  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  without  Tools ;  without  Tools  he  is  nothing,  with  Tools 
'he  is  all.' 

Here  may  we  not,  for  a  moment,  interrupt  the  stream 
of  Oratory  with  a  remark  that  this  Definition  of  the  Tool- 
5  using  Animal  appears  to  us,  of  all  that  Animal-sort,  con- 
siderably the  precisest  and  best?  Man  is  called  a 
Laughing  Animal  :  but  do  not  the  apes  also  laugh,  or 
attempt  to  do  it ;  and  is  the  manliest  man  the  greatest 
and  oftenest  laugher  ?    Teufelsdrockh  himself,  as  we  said, 

lo  laughed  only  once.  Still  less  do  we  make  of  that  other 
French  Definition  of  the  Cooking  Animal ;  which,  indeed, 
for  rigorous  scientific  purposes,  is  as  good  as  useless. 
Can  a  Tartar  be  said  to  cook,  when  he  only  readies  his 
steak  by  riding  on  it }     Again,   what   Cookery  does   the 

15  Greenlander  use,  beyond  stowing-up  his  whale-blubber, 
as  a  marmot,  in  the  like  case,  might  do .''  Or  how  would 
Monsieur  Ude  prosper  among  those  Orinocco  Indians, 
who,  according  to  Humboldt,  lodge  in  crow-nests,  on  the 
branches  of  trees  ;  and,  for  half  the  year,  have  no  victuals 

20  but  pipe-clay,  the  whole  country  being  under  water  ? 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  show  us  the  human  being,  of  any 
period  or  climate,  without  his  Tools  :  those  very  Cale- 
donians, as  we  saw,  had  their  Flint-ball,  and  Thong  to  it, 
such  as  no  brute  has  or  can  have. 

25  '  Man  is  a  Tool-using  Animal,'  concludes  Teufelsdrockh, 
in  his  abrupt  way ;  '  of  which  truth  Clothes  are  but  one 
'  example  :  and  surely  if  we  consider  the  interval  between 
'  the  first  wooden  Dibble  fashioned  by  man,  and  those 
'  Liverpool    Steam-carriages,    or   the    British    House    of 

30  '  Commons,  we  shall  note  what  progress  he  has  made. 
'  He  digs  up  certain  black  stones  from  the  bosom  of  the 
'  Earth,  and  says  to  them,  T?-ansport  me  and  this  luggage, 
"^  at  the  rate  of  five-a?id-thirty  miles  a?i  hour;  and  they  do 
'  it :  he  collects,  apparently  by  lot,  six-hundred  and  fifty- 


APRONS. 


37 


eight  miscellaneous  individuals,  and  says  to  them,  Make 
this  nation  toil  for  us,  bleed  for  tcs,  hunger  and  sorrow 
afid  sin  for  us;  and  they  do  it.' 


CHAPTER    VI. 

APRONS. 

One  of  the  most  unsatisfactory  Sections  in  the  whole 
Volume  is  that  on  Aprons.     What  though  stout  old  Gao,     5 
the  Persian  Blacksmith,  'whose  apron,  now  indeed  hidden 
'  under  jewels,  because  raised  in  revolt  which  proved  suc- 
'cessful,  is  still  the  royal  standard  of  that  country';  what 
though  John  Knox's  Daughter, '  who  threatened  Sovereign 
'  Majesty  that  she  would  catch  her  husband's  head  in  her  10 
'Apron,  rather  than  he   should  lie   and  be   a  bishop'; 
what  though  the  Landgravine  Elizabeth,  with  many  other 
Apron  worthies,  —  figure   here  ?     An    idle    wire-drawing 
spirit,  sometimes  even  a  tone  of  levity,   approaching  to 
conventional   satire,   is   too   clearly   discernible.      What,  15 
for  example,  are  we  to   make  of  such  sentences  as  the 
following .? 

'  Aprons  are  JDefences  ;  against  injury  to  cleanliness, 

*  to  safety,  to  modesty,  sometimes  to  roguery.     From  the 

'  thin   slip  of  notched   silk  (as  it  were,  the  Emblem  and  20 
'  beatified  Ghost  of  an  Apron),  which  some  highest-bred 
'  housewife,  sitting  at  Niirnberg  Workboxes  and  Toyboxes, 
'  has  gracefully  fastened  on  ;  to  the  thick-tanned  hide, 

*  girt  round  him  with  thongs,  wherein  the  Builder  builds, 
*and  at  evening  sticks  his  trowel;  or  to  those  jingling  25 
'  sheet-iron   Aprons,  wherein  your  otherwise  half-naked 

'  Vulcans  hammer  and  smelt  in  their  smelt-furnace,  —  is 


38  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  there  not  range  enough  in  the  fashion  and  uses  of  this 
'  Vestment  ?  How  much  has  been  concealed,  how  much 
'  has  been  defended  in  Aprons  !  Nay,  rightly  considered, 
'  what  is  your  whole  Military  and  Police  Establishment, 
5  '  charged  at  uncalculated  millions,  but  a  huge  scarlet- 
'  coloured,  iron-fastened  Apron,  wherein  Society  works 
'  (uneasily  enough);  guarding  itself  from  some  soil  and 
'  stithy-sparks,  in  this  Devil's-smithy  {TeiifelsscJwiiede)  of  a 
'  world  ?     But   of  all   Aprons  the   most  puzzling  to  me 

10  '  hitherto  has  been  the  Episcopal  or  Cassock.  Wherein 
'  consists  the  usefulness  of  this  Apron  ?  The  Overseer 
'  {Episcopus)  of  Souls,  I  notice,  has  tucked-in  the  corner 
'of  it,  as  if  his  day's  work  was  done:  what  does  Ke 
'  shadow  forth  thereby  ? '  &c.,  &c. 

15  Or  again,  has  it  often  been  the  lot  of  our  readers  to 
read  such  stuff  as  we  shall  now  quote? 

'I  consider  those  printed  Paper  Aprons,  worn  by  the 
'  Parisian  Cooks,  as  a  new  vent,  though  a  slight  onf ,  for 
'  Typography  ;  therefore  as  an  encouragement  to  mc  iern 

20  '  Literature,  and  deserving  of  approval  :  nor  is  it  wi  hout 
'satisfaction  that  I  hear  of  a  celebrated  London  Firm 
'having  in  view  to  introduce  the  same  fashion,  with 
'important  extensions,  in  England.'  —  We  who  are  m  the 
spot  hear  of  no  such  thing;  and  indeed  have  reason  to 

25  be  thankful  that  hitherto  there  are  other  vents  "or  our 
Literature,  exuberant  as  it  is.  — Teufelsdrockh  continues  : 
'  If  such  supply  of  printed  Paper  should  rise  so  far  as  to 
'choke-up  the  highways  and  public  thoroughfares  new 
'  means  must  of  necessity  be  had  recourse  to.     In  a  world 

30  '  existing  by  Industry,  we  grudge  to  employ  fire  as  a  de- 
'stroying  element,  and  not  as  a  creating  one.  However, 
'  Heaven  is  omnipotent,  and  will  find  us  an  outlet.  In 
'the  meanwhile,  is  it  not  beautiful  to  see  five-million 
'quintals  of  Rags  picked  annually  from  the  Laystall ;  and 


APRONS,  3g 

annually,  after  being  macerated,  hot-pressed,  printed-on, 
and  sold,  —  returned  thither ;  filling  so  many  hungry 
mouths  by  the  way?  Thus  is  the  Laystall,  especially  with 
its  Rags  or  Clothes-rubbish,  the  grand  Electric  Battery, 
and  Fountain-of-motion,  from  which  and  to  which  the  5 
Social  Activities  (like  vitreous  and  resinous  Electricities) 
circulate,  in  larger  or  smaller  circles,  through  the  mighty, 
billowy,  stormtost  Chaos  of  Life,  which  they  keep  alive  ! ' 
—  Such  passages  fill  us,  who  love  the  man,  and  partly 
esteem  him,  with  a  very  mixed  feeling.  10 

Farther  down  we  meet  with  this  :  '  The  Journalists  are 
'now  the  true  Kings  and  Clergy  :  henceforth  Historians, 
nunless  they  are  fools,  must  write  not  of  Bourbon  Dynas- 
ties, and  Tudors  and  Hapsburgs  ;  but  of  Stamped  Broad- 
sheet Dynasties,  and  quite  new  successive  Names,  ac-  15 
cording  as  this  or  the  other  Able  Editor,  or  Combination 
of  Able  Editors,  gains  the  world's  ear.  Of  the  British 
Newspaper  Press,  perhaps  the  most  important  of  all, 
a^vd  wonderful  enough  in  its  secret  constitution  and 
prf)cedure,  a  valuable  descriptive  History  already  exists,  20 
in  that  language,  under  the  title  of  Sata?i's  Invisible 
World  Displayed;  which,  however,  by  search  in  all  the 
W6)issnichtwo  Libraries,  I  have  not  yet  succeeded  in 
procuring  {yervwchie  iiicht  aufzutreibeii) .' 

T'^us  does  the  good  Homer  not  only  nod,  but  snore.  25 
Thus  does  Teufelsdrockh,  wandering  in  regions  where  he 
had  little  business,  confound  the  old  authentic  Presby- 
terian Witchfinder,  with  a  new,  spurious,  imaginary 
Historian  of  the  Brittische  Jour7iaIistik ;  and  so  stumble 
on  perhaps  the  most  egregious  blunder  in  modern  3° 
Literature  ! 


40 


6V1  A'  TOR   RESAR  TUS. 


CHAPTER    VII. 


MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 


Happier  is  our  Professor,  and  more  purely  scientific 
and  historic,  when  he  reaches  the  Middle  Ages  in  Europe, 
and  down  to  the  end  of  the  Seventeenth  Century  ;  the 
true  era  of  extravagance  in  costume.  It  is  here  that 
5  the  Antiquary  and  Student  of  Modes  comes  upon  his 
richest  harvest.  Fantastic  garbs,  beggaring  all  fancy  of 
a  Teniers  or  a  Callot,  succeed  each  other,  like  monster 
devouring  monster  in  a  Dream.  The  whole  too  in  brief 
authentic    strokes,    and    touched    not    seldom   with  that 

lo  breath  of  genius  which  makes  even  old  raiment  live. 
Indeed,  so  learned,  precise,  graphical,  and  everyway 
interesting  have  we  found  these  Chapters,  that  it  may  be 
thrown-out  as  a  pertinent  question  for  parties  concerned, 
Whether  or  not  a  good  English  Translation  thereof  might 

15  henceforth  be  profitably  incorporated  with  Mr.  Merrick's 
valuable  Work  On  Ancietit  A?'mour?  Take,  by  way  of 
example,  the  following  sketch ;  as  authority  for  which 
Paulinus's  Zeitkiirzende  Lust  (ii.  678)  is,  with  seeming 
confidence,  referred  to  : 

20  '  Did  we  behold  the  German  fashionable  dress  of  the 
'Fifteenth  Century,  we  might  smile;. as  perhaps  those 
'bygone  Germans,  were  they  to  rise  again,  and  see  our 
'haberdashery,  would  cross  themselves,  and  invoke  the 
'Virgin.     But  happily  no  bygone  German,  or  man,  rises 

25  '  again  ;  thus  the  Present  is  not  needlessly  trammelled 
'  with  the  Past ;  and  only  grows  out  of  it,  like  a  Tree, 
'whose  roots  are  not  intertangled  with  its  branches,  but 
'  lie  peaceably  under-ground.  Nay,  it  is  very  mournful, 
'yet  not  useless,  to  see  and  know,  how  the  Greatest  and 

30  '  Dearest,  in   a   short  while,  would   find   his   place   quite 


MISCELLANEOUS-HIS  TORICAL.  41 

'  filled-up  here,  and  no  room  for  him  ;  the  very  Napoleon, 
'  the  very  Byron,  in  some  seven  years,  has  become  obsol- 
'ete,  and  were  now  a  foreigner  to  his  Europe.  Thus  is 
'the  Law  of  Progress  secured;  and  in  Clothes,  as  in  all 
'other  external  things  whatsoever,  no  fashion  will  5 
'  continue. 

'  Of  the  military  classes  in  those  old  times,  whose  buff- 
'  belts,  complicated  chains  and  gorgets,  huge  churn-boots, 
'  and  other  riding  and  fighting  gear  have  been  bepainted 
'in  modern  Romance,  till  the  whole  has  acquired  some-  10 
'  what  of  a  sign-post  character,  —  I  shall  here  say  nothing  : 
'the  civil  and  pacific  classes,  less  touched  upon,  are 
'wonderful  enough  for  us. 

'Rich  men,  I  find,  have  Teusinke'  (a  perhaps  untrans- 
lateable  article);  'also  a  silver  girdle,  whereat  hang  little  15 
'  bells  ;  so  that  when  a  man  walks  it  is  with  continual 
'jingling.  Some  few,  of  musical  turn,  have  a  whole 
'chime  of  bells  (Glockenspiel)  fastened  there;  which, 
'  especially  in  sudden  whirls,  and  the  other  accidents  of 
'  walking,  has  a  grateful  effect.  Observe  too  how  fond  20 
'  they  are  of  peaks,  and  Gothic-arch  intersections.  The 
'  male  world  wears  peaked  caps,  an  ell  long,  which  hang 
'  bobbing  over  the  side  (sc/iief) :  their  shoes  are  peaked 
'  in  front,  also  to  the  length  of  an  ell,  and  laced  on  the 
'  side  with  tags  ;  even  the  wooden  shoes  have  their  ell-  25 
'  long  noses  :  some  also  clap  bells  on  the  peak.  Further, 
'  according  to  my  authority,  the  men  have  breeches  with- 
'  out  seat  {oh7ie  Gesdss) :  these  they  fasten  peakwise  to 
'  their  shirts  ;  and  the  long  round  doublet  must  overlap 
'  them.  30 

'  Rich  maidens,  again,  flit  abroad  in  gowns  scolloped 
'  out  behind  and  before,  so  that  back  and  breast  are 
'  almost  bare.  Wives  of  quality,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
'  train-gowns    four  or   five   ells   in   length  ;    which  trains 


42  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

there  are  boys  to  carry.  Brave  Cleopatras,  sailing  in 
their  silk-cloth  Galley,  with  a  Cupid  for  steersman ! 
Consider  their  welts,  a  handbreadth  thick,  which  waver 
round  them  by  way  of  hem  ;  the  long  flood  of  silver 
buttons,  or  rather  silver  shells,  from  throat  to  shoe, 
wherewith  these  same  welt-gowns  are  buttoned.  The 
maidens  have  bound  silver  snoods  about  their  hair,  with 
gold  spangles,  and  pendent  flames  {Fla7n?ne?i),  that  is, 
sparkling  hair-drops  :  but  of  their  mother's  headgear 
who  shall  speak  ?  Neither  in  love  of  grace  is  comfort 
forgotten.  In  winter  weather  you  behold  the  whole  fair 
creation  (that  can  afford  it)  in  long  mantles,  with  skirts 
wide  below,  and,  for  hem,  not  one  but  two  sufficient 
handbroad  welts  ;  all  ending  atop  in  a  thick  well- 
15  starched  Ruff,  some  twenty  inches  broad:  these  are 
their  Ruff-mantles  {Krageiwiiintel). 

*  As  yet  among  the  womankind  hoop-petticoats  are  not  ; 
but  the  men  have  doublets  of  fustian,  under  which  lie 
multiple  ruffs  of  cloth,  pasted  together  with  batter  (jnit 
Teig  zusammcfigckleistert),  which  create  protuberance 
enough.  Thus  do  the  two  sexes  vie  wdth  each  other  in 
the  art  of  Decoration ;  and  as  usual  the  stronger 
carries  it.' 

Our  Professor,  whether  he  have  humour  himself  or  not, 
25  manifests  a  certain  feeling  of  the  Ludicrous,  a  sly  observ- 
ance of  it,  which,  could  emotion  of  any  kind  be  confidently 
predicted  of  so  still  a  man,  we  might  call  a  real  love. 
None  of  those  bell-girdles,  bushel-breeches,  cornuted 
shoes  or  other  the  like  phenomena,  of  which  the  History 
30  of  Dress  offers  so  many,  escape  him  :  more  especially  the 
mischances,  or  striking  adventures,  incident  to  the  wearers 
of  such,  are  noticed  with  due  fidelity.  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  fine  mantle,  which  he  spread  in  the  mud  under 
Queen  Elizabeth's  feet,  appears  to  provoke  little  enthusi- 


MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.  43 

asm  in  him  :  he  merely  asks,  Whether  at  that  period  the 
Maiden  Queen  '  was  red-painted  on  the  nose,  and  white- 
'  painted  on  the  cheeks,  as  her  tirewomen,  when  from 
'  spleen  and  wrinkles  she  would  no  longer  look  in  any 
*  glass,  were  wont  to  serve  her  ? '  We  can  answer  that  5 
Sir  Walter  knew  well  what  he  was  doing,  and  had  the 
Maiden  Queen  been  stuffed  parchment  dyed  in  verdigris, 
would  have  done  the  same. 

Thus  too,  treating  of  those  enormous  habiliments,  that 
were  not  only  slashed  and  galooned,  but  artificially  swol-  10 
len-out  on  the  broader  parts  of  the  body,  by  introduction 
of  Bran,  —  our  Professor  fails  not  to  comment  on  that 
luckless  Courtier,  who  having  seated  himself  on  a  chair 
with  some  projecting  nail  on  it,  and  therefrom  rising,  to 
pay  his  devoir  on  the  entrance  of  Majesty,  instantaneously  15 
emitted  several  pecks  of  dry  wheat-dust  :  and  stood  there 
diminished  to  a  spindle,  his  galoons  and  slashes  dangling 
sorrowful  and  flabby  round  him.  Whereupon  the  Pro- 
fessor publishes  this  reflection  : 

'  By  what  strange  chances  do  we  live  in  History  !    Eros-  20 
'  tratus  by  a  torch ;   Milo  by  a  bullock  ;   Henry  Darnley, 
'  an  unfledged  booby  and  bustard,   by  his  limbs  ;   most 
'  Kings  and  Queens  by  being  born  under  such  and  such 
'  a  bedtester  ;  Boileau  Despreaux  (according  to  Helvetius) 
'  by  the  peck  of  a  turkey ;  and  this  ill-starred  individual  25 
'  by  a  rent  in  his  breeches,  —  for  no  Memoirist  of  Kaiser 
'  Otto's  Court  omits  him.     Vain  was  the  prayer  of  The- 
'  mistocles  for  a  talent  of  Forgetting :  my  Friends,  yield 
'cheerfully  to  Destiny,   and  read  since  it  is  written.'  — 
Has  Teufelsdrockh  to  be  put  in  mind  that,  nearly  related  30 
to  the  impossible  talent  of  Forgetting,  stands  that  talent 
of  Silence,  which  even  travelling  Englishmen  manifest? 

'  The  simplest  costume,'  observes  our  Professor,  '  which 
'  I  anywhere  find  alluded  to  in   History,  is  that  used  as 


44 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


'  regimental,  by  Bolivar's  Cavalry,  in  the  late  Columbian 
'  wars.  A  square  Blanket,  twelve  feet  in  diagonal,  is  pro- 
'  vided  (some  were  wont  to  cut-off  the  corners,  and  make 
'  it   circular)  :  in   the   centre   a   slit  is   effected  eighteen 

5  '  inches  long  ;  through  this  the  mother-naked  Trooper  in- 
'  troduces  his  head  and  neck  ;  and  so  rides  shielded  from 
'  all  weather,  and  in  battle  from  many  strokes  (for  he 
'  rolls  it  about  his  left  arm)  ;  and  not  only  dressed,  but 
'  harnessed  and  draperied.' 

o  With  which  picture  of  a  State  of  Nature,  affecting  by 
its  singularity,  and  Old-Roman  contempt  of  the  super- 
fluous, we  shall  quit  this  part  of  our  subject. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

THE    WORLD    OUT    OF    CLOTHES. 

If  in  the  Descriptive-Historical  Portion  of  this  Volume, 
Teufelsdrockh,  discussing  merely  the  Werden  (Origin  and 

15  successive  Improvement)  of  Clothes,  has  astonished  many 
a  reader,  much  more  will  he  in  the  Speculative-Philosoph- 
ical Portion,  which  treats  of  their  Wirken,  or  Influences. 
It  is  here  that  the  present  Editor  first  feels  the  pressure 
of  his  task  ;  for  here  properly  the  higher  and  new  Phi- 

20  losophy  of  Clothes  commences  :  an  untried,  almost  in- 
conceivable region,  or  chaos ;  in  venturing  upon  which, 
how  diflicult,  yet  how  unspeakably  important  is  it  to  know 
what  course,  of  survey  and  conquest,  is  the  true  one  ; 
where  the  footing  is  firm  substance  and  will  bear  us,  where 

25  it  is  hollow,  or  mere  cloud,  and  may  engulf  us !  Teufels- 
drockh undertakes  no  less  than  to  expound  the  moral, 
political,  even  religious  Influences  of  Clothes ;  he  under- 


THE   WORLD    OUT  OF  CLOTHES. 


45 


takes  to  make  manifest,  in  its  thousandfold  bearings,  this 
grand  Proposition,  that  Man's  earthly  interests  '  are  all 
hooked  and  buttoned  together,  and  held  up,  by  Clothes.' 
He  says  in  so  many  words,  '  Society  is  founded  upon 
'  Cloth  '  ;  and  again,  '  Society  sails  through  the  Infinitude  5 
'on  Cloth,  as  on  a  Faust's  Mantle,  or  rather  like  the 
'  Sheet  of  clean  and  unclean  beasts  in  the  Apostle's 
'  Dream  ;  and  without  such  Sheet  or  Mantle,  would  sink 
'  to  endless  depths,  or  mount  to  inane  limboes,  and  in 
'  either  case  be  no  more.'  10 

By  what  chains,  or  indeed  infinitely  complected  tissues, 
of  Meditation  this  grand  Theorem  is  here  unfolded,  and 
innumerable  practical  Corollaries  are  drawn  therefrom,  it 
were  perhaps  a  mad  ambition  to  attempt  exhibiting.    Our 
Professor's  method  is  not,  in  any  case,  that  of  common  15 
school  Logic,  where   the  truths  all  stand  in  a  row,  each 
holding  by  the   skirts  of  the  other ;  but  at  best  that  of 
practical    Reason,   proceeding   by    large    Intuition    over 
whole   systematic  groups  and   kingdoms ;    whereby,   we 
might  say,  a  noble  complexity,  almost  like  that  of  Nature,  20 
reigns  in  his  Philosophy,  or  spiritual  Picture  of  Nature : 
a  mighty  maze,  yet,  as  faith  whispers,  not  without  a  plan.  ' 
Nay  we  complained  above,  that   a   certain  ignoble   com- 
plexity,   what  we    must    call   mere   confusion,   was   also 
discernible.     Often,  also,  we  have  to  exclaim  :  Would  to  25 
Heaven  those  same  Biographical  Documents  were  come  ! 
For  it  seems  as  if  the  demonstration  lay  much  in  the 
Author's  individuality ;  as  if  it  were  not  Argument  that 
had  taught  him,  but  Experience.    At  present  it  is  only  in 
local  glimpses,  and  by  significant  fragments,  picked  often  30 
at  wide-enough  intervals  from  the  original  Volume,  and 
carefully  collated,  that  we  can  hope  to  impart  some  out- 
line  or  foreshadow   of  this   Doctrine.     Readers  of  any 
intelligence  are  once  more  invited  to  favour  us  with  their 


^6  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

most  concentrated  attention  :  let  these,  after  intense  con- 
sideration, and  not  till  then,  pronounce,  Whether  on  the 
utmost  verge  of  our  actual  horizon  there  is  not  a  looming 
as  of  Land  ;  a  promise  of  new  Fortunate  Islands,  perhaps 
5  whole  undiscovered  Americas,  for  such  as  have  canvas 
to  sail  thither?  —  As  exordium  to  the  whole,  stand  here 
the  following  long  citation  : 

'  With  men  of  a  speculative  turn,'  writes  Teufelsdrockh, 
'  there  come  seasons,  meditative,  sweet,  yet  awful  hours, 

10  '  when  in  wonder  and  fear  you  ask  yourself  that  unan- 
'swerable  question:  Who  am  /;  the  thing  that  can  say 
'  "  I  "  (das  JVesen  das  sich  Ich  nennt)  ?  ^The  world,  with 
'  its  loud  trafficking,  retires  into  the  distance  ;  and  through 
'the    paper-hangings,    and    stone-walls,    and    thick-plied 

15  'tissues  of  Commerce  and  Polity,  and  all  the  living  and 
'  lifeless  integuments  (of  Society  and  a  Body),  wherewith 
'your  Existence  sits  surrounded,  —  the  sight  reaches 
'  forth  into  the  void  Deep,  and  you  are  alone  with  the 
'  Universe,  and  silently  commune  with  it  as  one  myste- 

20  '  rious  Presence  with  another. 

'  Who  am  I ;  what  is  this  Me  ?  A  Voice,  a  Motion,  an 
'  Appearance  ;  —  some  embodied,  visualised  Idea  in  the 
'  Eternal  Mind  ?  Cogito,  ergo  siwt.  Alas,  poor  Cogitator, 
'  this  takes  us  but  a  little  way.     Sure  enough,  I  am ;  and 

25  '  lately  was  not  :  but  Whence  .?     How  ?    Whereto  1     The 
'  answer  lies  around,  written  in  all  colours  and  motions, 
'  uttered  in   all   tones   of  jubilee  and  wail,  in  thousand- 
'  figured,  thousand-voiced,  harmonious  Nature  :  but  where  ' 
'  is  the  cunning  eye  and  ear  to  whom  that  God-written  7 

30  '  Apocalypse  will  yield  articulate  meaning  ?  We  sit  as  in 
*  a  boundless  Phantasmagoria  and  Dream-grotto  ;  bound- 
'  less,  for  the  faintest  star,  the  remotest  century,  lies  not 
'  even  nearer  the  verge  thereof  :  sounds  and  many- 
'  coloured   visions   flit    round    our    sense;    but  Him,  the 


THE   WORLD    OUT  OF  CLOTHES.  47 

Unslumbering,  whose  work  both  Dream  and  Dreamer  are, 
we  see  not ;  except  in  rare  half-waking  moments,  suspect 
not.  Creation,  says  one,  lies  before  us,  like  a  glorious 
Rainbow ;  but  the  Sun  that  made  it  lies  behind  us, 
hidden  from  us.  Then,  in  that  strange  Dream,  how  we  5 
clutch  at  shadows  as  if  they  were  substances ;  and  sleep 
deepest  while  fancying  ourselves  most  awake  !  Which 
of  your  Philosophical  Systems  is  other  than  a  dream- 
theorem  ;  a  net  quotient,  confidently  given  out,  where 
divisor  and  dividend  are  both  unknown  t  What  are  all  10 
your  national  Wars,  with  their  Moscow  Retreats,  and 
sanguinary  hate-filled  Revolutions,  but  the  Somnam- 
bulism of  uneasy  Sleepers?  This  Dreaming,  this 
Somnambulism  is  what  we  on  Earth  call  Life ;  wherein 
the  most  indeed  undoubtingly  wander,  as  if  they  knew  15 
right  hand  from  left ;  yet  they  only  are  wise  who  know 
that  they  know  nothing. 

'  Pity  that  all  Metaphysics  had  hitherto  proved  so 
inexpressibly  unproductive  !  The  secret  of  Man's  Being 
is  still  like  the  Sphinx's  secret :  a  riddle  that  he  cannot  20 
rede  ;  and  for  ignorance  of  which  he  suffers  death,  the 
worst  death,  a  spiritual.  What  are  your  Axioms,  and 
Categories,  and  Systems,  and  Aphorisms  ?  Words, 
words.  High  Air-castles  are  cunningly  built  of  Words, 
the  Words  well  bedded  also  in  good  Logic-mortar ;  25 
wherein,  however,  no  Knowledge  will  come  to  lodge. 
The  whole  is  greater  than  the  part :  how  exceedingly  true  ! 
Nature  abhors  a  vacuimi :  how  exceedingly  false  and 
calumnious  !  Again,  Nothing  ca?i  act  but  ivhere  it  is  : 
with  all  my  heart ;  only  where  is  it  ?  Be  not  the  slave  30 
of  Words  :  is  not  the  Distant,  the  Dead,  while  I  love  it, 
and  long  for  it,  and  mourn  for  it,  Here,  in  the  genuine 
sense,  as  truly  as  the  floor  I  stand  on  ?  But  that  same 
Where,  with  its  brother.  When,  are  from   the  first   the 


48  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

master-colours  of  our  Dream-grotto ;  say,  rather,  the 
Canvas  (the  warp  and  woof  thereof)  whereon  all  our 
Dreams  and  Life-visions  are  painted.  Nevertheless, 
has  not  a  deeper  meditation  taught  certain  of  every 
climate  and  age,  that  the  Where  and  When,  so  myste- 
riously inseparable  from  all  our  thoughts,  are  but  super- 
ficial terrestrial  adhesions  to  thought ;  that  the  Seer 
may  discern  them  where  they  mount  up  out  of  the 
celestial  Everywhere  and  Forever  :  have  not  all 
nations  conceived  their  God  as  Omnipresent  and 
Eternal ;  as  existing  in  a  universal  Here,  an  everlast- 
ing Now  ?  Think  well,  thou  too  wilt  find  that  Space  is 
but  a  mode  of  our  human  Sense,  so  likewise  Time  ; 
there  is  no  Space  and  no  Time  :  We  are  —  we  know 
not  what ;  —  light-sparkles  floating  in  the  aether  of 
Deity  ! 

'  So  that  this  so  solid-seeming  World,  after  all,  were  but 
an  air-image,  our  Me  the  only  reality  :  and  Nature,  with 
its  thousandfold  production  and  destruction,  but  the 
reflex  of  our  own  inward  Force,  the  "phantasy  of  our 
Dream";  or  what  the  Earth-Spirit  in  Faust  names  it, 
the  living  visible  Garment  of  God. 

' "  In  Being's  floods,  in  Action's  storm, 
I  walk  and  work,  above,  beneath, 
Work  and  weave  in  endless  motion  ! 
Birth  and  Death, 

An  infinite  ocean  ;  ~~ 

A  seizing  and  giving 
The  fire  of  Living  : 
30  'Tis  thus  at  the  roaring  Loom  of  Time  I  ply, 

And  weave  for  God  the  Garment  thou  seest  Him  by." 

'  Of  twenty  millions  that  have  read  and  spouted  this 
'  thunder-speech  of  the  Erdgeist,  are  there  yet  twenty 
'  units  of  us  that  have  learned  the  meaning  thereof  ? 


25 


THE    WORLD    OUT  OF  CLOTHES.  49 

'  It  was  in  some  such  mood,  when  wearied  and  fordone 
with  these  high  speculations,  that  I  first  came  upon  the 
question  of  Clothes.  Strange  enough,  it  strikes  me,  is 
this  same  fact  of  there  being  Tailors  and  Tailored.  The 
Horse  I  ride  has  his  own  whole  fell  :  strip  him  of  the  5 
girths  and  flaps  and  extraneous  tags  I  have  fastened 
round  him,  and  the  noble  creature  is  his  own  sempster 
and  weaver  and  spinner ;  nay  his  own  bootmaker, 
jeweller,  and  man-milliner ;  he  bounds  free  through  the 
valleys,  with  a  perennial  rainproof  court-suit  on  his  10 
body  ;  wherein  warmth  and  easiness  of  fit  have  reached 
perfection  ;  nay,  the  graces  also  have  been  considered, 
and  frills  and  fringes,  with  gay  variety  of  colour,  featly 
appended,  and  ever  in  the  right  place,  are  not  wanting. 
While  I  —  good  Heaven  !  —  have  thatched  myself  over  15 
with  the  dead  fleeces  of  sheep,  the  bark  of  vegetables, 
the  entrails  of  worms,  the  hides  of  oxen  or  seals,  the 
felt  of  furred  beasts ;  and  walk  abroad  a  moving  Rag- 
screen,  overheaped  with  shreds  and  tatters  raked  from 
the  Charnel-house  of  Nature,  where  they  would  have  20 
rotted,  to  rot  on  me  more  slowly  !  Day  after  day,  I 
must  thatch  myself  anew  ;  day  after  day,  this  despicable 
thatch  must  lose  some  film  of  its  thickness  ;  some  film 
of  it,  frayed  away  by  tear  and  wear,  must  be  brushed- 
off  into  the  Ashpit,  into  the  Laystall ;  till  by  degrees  25 
the  whole  has  been  brushed  thither,  and  I,  the  dust- 
making,  patent  Rag-grinder,  get  new  material  to  grind 
down.  O  subter-brutish  !  vile  !  most  vile  !  For  have 
not  I  too  a  compact  all-enclosing  Skin,  whiter  or  dingier  ? 
Am  I  a  botched  mass  of  tailors'  and  cobblers'  shreds,  30 
then  ;  or  a  tightly-articulated,  homogeneous  little  Figure, 
automatic,  nay  alive  ? 

'  Strange  enough  how  creatures  of  the  human-kind  shut 
their  eyes  to  plainest  facts ;  and  by  the  mere  inertia  of 


5° 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


'  Oblivion  and  Stupidity,  live  at  ease  in  the  midst  of 
'  Wonders  and  Terrors,  But  indeed  man  is,  and  was 
'  always,  a  blockhead  and  dullard  ;  much  readier  to  feel 
'and  digest,  than  to  think  and  consider.  Prejudice, 
'  which  he  pretends  to  hate,  is  his  absolute  lawgiver  ; 
'  mere  use-and-wont  every\vhere  leads  him  by  the  nose  : 
'  thus  let  but  a  Rising  of  the  Sun,  let  but  a  Creation  of 
'the  World  happen  twice,  and  it  ceases  to  be  marvellous, 
^'  to  be  noteworthy,  or  noticeable.     Perhaps  not  once  in  a 

lo  '  lifetime  does  it  occur  to  your  ordinary  biped,  of  any 
'  country  or  generation,  be  he  gold-mantled  Prince  or 
'  russet-jerkined  Peasant,  that  his  Vestments  and  his 
'  Self  are  not  one  and  indivisible  ;  that  he  is  naked,  with- 
'  out  vestments,  till  he  buy  or  steal   such,  and  by  fore- 

15  'thought  sew  and  button  them. 

'  For  my  own  part,  these  considerations,  of  our  Clothes- 
'  thatch,  and  how,  reaching  inwards  even  to  our  heart  of 
'  hearts,  it  tailorises  and  demoralises  us,  fill  me  with  a 
'  certain  horror  at  myself,  and  mankind ;  almost  as  one 

20  '  feels  at  those  Dutch  Cows,  which,  during  the  wet  season, 
'  you  see  grazing  deliberately  with  jackets  and  petticoats 
'  (of  striped  sacking),  in  the  meadows  of  Gouda.  Never- 
'  theless  there  is  something  great  in  the  moment  when  a 
'  man  first  strips  himself  of  adventitious  wrappages  ;  and 

25  'sees  indeed  that  he  is  naked,  and,  as  Swift  has  it,  ''a~~1 
'forked  straddling  animal  with  bandy  legs";  yet  also  a  ' 
'  Spirit,  and  unutterable  Mystery  of  Mysteries.' 


ADAMITISM.  c\ 


CHAPTER    IX. 


ADAMITISM. 


Let  no  courteous  reader  take  offence  at  the  opinions 
broached  in  the  conchision  of  the  last  Chapter.  The 
Editor  himself,  on  first  glancing  over  that  singular 
passage,  was  inclined  to  exclaim  :  What,  have  we  got 
not  only  a  Sansculottist,  but  an  enemy  to  Clothes  in  5 
the  abstract?  A  new  Adamite,  in  this  century,  which 
flatters  itself  that  it  is  the  Nineteenth,  and  destructive 
both  to  Superstition  and  Enthusiasm  ? 

Consider,  thou  foolish  Teufelsdrockh,  what  benefits 
unspeakable  all  ages  and  sexes  derive  from  Clothes.  lo 
For  example,  when  thou  thyself,  a  watery,  pulpy,  slob- 
bery freshman  and  new-comer  in  this  Planet,  sattest 
muling  and  puking  in  thy  nurse's  arms  ;  sucking  thy 
coral  and  looking  forth  into  the  world  in  the  blankest 
manner,  what  hadst  thou  been,  without  thy  blankets,  and  15 
bibs,  and  other  nameless  hulls  1  A  terror  to  thyself  and 
mankind !  Or  hast  thou  forgotten  the  day  when  thou 
first  receivedst  breeches,  and  thy  long  clothes  became 
short .''  The  village  where  thou  livedst  was  all  apprized 
of  the  fact;  and  neighbour  after  neighbour  kissed  thy  20 
pudding-cheek,  and  gave  thee,  as  handsel,  silver  or  cop- 
per coins,  on  that  the  first  gala-day  of  thy  existence. 
Again,  wert  not  thou,  at  one  period  of  life,  a  Buck,  or 
Blood,  or  Macaroni,  or  Incroyable,  or  Dandy,  or  by 
whatever  name,  according  to  year  and  place,  such  phe-  -5 
nomenon  is  distinguished  ?  In  that  one  word  lie  included 
mysterious  volumes.  Nay,  now  when  the  reign  of  folly 
is  over,  or  altered,  and  thy  clothes  are  not  for  triumph 
but  for  defence,  hast  thou  always  worn  them  perforce, 
and  as  a  consequence  of  Man's  Fall ;  never  rejoiced  in  30 


2 2  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

them  as  in  a  warm  movable  House,  a  Body  round  thy 
Body,  wherein  that  strange  Thee  of  thine  sat  snug,  de- 
fying all  variations  of  Climate?  Girt  with  thick  double- 
milled  kerseys  ;  half-buried  under  shawls  and  broad- 
5  brims,  and  overalls  and  mudboots,  thy  very  fingers  cased 
in  doeskin  and  mittens,  thou  hast  bestrode  that  '  Horse 
I  ride '  ;  and,  though  it  were  in  wild  winter,  dashed 
through  the  world,  glorying  in  it  as  if  thou  wert  its  lord. 
In  vain  did  the  sleet  beat  round  thy  temples ;  it  lighted 

lo  only  on  thy  impenetrable,  felted  or  woven,  case  of  wool. 
In  vain  did  the  winds  howl,  —  forests  sounding  and 
creaking,  deep  calling  unto  deep,  —  and  the  storms  heap 
themselves  together  into  one  huge  Arctic  whirlpool ; 
thou  flewest   through   the   middle   thereof,    striking  fire 

15  from  the  highway;  wild  music  hummed  in  thy  ears,  thou 
too  wert  as  a  'sailor  of  the  air'  ;  the  wreck  of  matter  and 
the  crash  of  worlds  was  thy  element  and  propitiously 
wafting  tide.  Without  Clothes,  without  bit  or  saddle, 
what  hadst  thou  been  ;  what  had   thy  fleet   quadruped 

20  been? — Nature  is  good,  but  she  is  not  the  best;  here 
truly  was  the  victory  of  Art  over  Nature.  A  thunder- 
bolt indeed  might  have  pierced  thee ;  all  short  of  this 
thou  couldst  defy. 

Or,  cries  the  courteous  reader,  has  your  Teufelsdrockh 

25  forgotten  what  he  said  lately  about  'Aboriginal  Savages,' 

and  their  'condition  miserable  indeed '  ?    Would  he  have 

all  this   unsaid ;    and   us  betake   ourselves  again  to  the 

'matted  cloak,'  and  go  sheeted  in  a  'thick  natural  fell'? 

Nowise,  courteous  reader  !     The  Professor  knows  full 

30  well  what  he  is  saying :  and  both  thou  and  we,  in  our 

haste,  do  him  wrong.      If  Clothes,   in   these   times,   'so 

tailorise   and    demoralise  us,'   have   they    no   redeeming 

J      value  ;  can  they   not   be  altered  to   serve  better ;  must 

they  of  necessity  be  thrown  to  the  dogs  ?     The  truth  is, 


ADAMITISM.  53 

Teufelsdrockh,  though  a  Sansculottist,  is  no  Adamite : 
and  much  perhaps  as  he  might  wish  to  go  forth  before 
this  degenerate  age,  *  as  a  Sign,'  would  nowise  wish  to 
do  it,  as  those  old  Adamites  did,  in  a  state  of  Nakedness. 
The  utility  of  Clothes  is  altogether  apparent  to  him  :  nay  5 
perhaps  he  has  an  insight  into  their  more  recondite,  and 
almost  mystic  qualities,  what  we  might  call  the  omnipo- 
tent virtue  of  Clothes,  such  as  was  never  before  vouch- 
safed to  any  man.      For  example  : 

*You  see  two  individuals,'  he  writes,  'one  dressed  in  lo 
'  fine  Red,  the  other  in  coarse  threadbare  Blue  :  Red  says 
'to  Blue,  "Be  hanged  and  anatomised;"  Blue  hears  with 
'  a  shudder,  and  (O  wonder  of  wonders  !)  marches  sorrow- 
'  fully  to  the  gallows ;   is  there  noosed  up,  vibrates  his 
'hour,  and  the  surgeons  dissect  him,  and  fit  his  bones  15 
'  into  a  skeleton  for  medical  purposes.     How  is  this  :  or 
'  what  make  ye  of  your  Nothing  can  act  hut  where  it  is  ? 
'Red  has  no  physical  hold  of  Blue,  no  clutch  of  him,  is 
'  nowise  in  contact  with  him :  neither  are  those  minister- 
'ing  Sheriffs  and    Lord-Lieutenants    and  Hangmen  and  20 
'  Tipstaves   so  related  to  commanding  Red,  that  he  can 
'  tug  them  hither  and  thither ;  but  each  stands  distinct 
'  within  his  own  skin.     Nevertheless,  as  it  is  spoken,  so 
'  it   is    done :  the    articulated    Word    sets    all   hands   in 
'  Action ;  and   Rope   and   Improved-drop   perform    their  25 
'  work. 

'  Thinking  reader,  the  reason  seems  to  me  twofold : 
'  First,  that  Matt  is  a  Spirit,  and  bound  by  invisible  bonds 
'to  Ail  Men;  secondly,  that  he  wears  Clothes,  which  are 
'  the  visible  emblems  of  that  fact.  Has  not  your  Red  30 
'  hanging-individual  a  horsehair  wig,  squirrel-skins,  and 
'a  plush-gown;  whereby  all  mortals  know  that  he  is  a 
'  Judge  ?  —  Society,  which  the  more  I  think  of  it  as- 
'  tonishes  me  the  more,  is  founded  upon  Cloth. 


^4  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

'  Often  in  my  atrabiliar  moods,  when  I  read  of  pom- 
'pous  ceremonials,  Frankfort  Coronations,  Royal  Draw- 
'ing-rooms,  Levees,  Couchees ;  and  how  the  ushers  and 
'macers  and  pursuivants  are  all  in  waiting;  how  Duke 
5  'this  is  presented  by  Archduke  that,  and  Colonel  A  by 
'  General  13,  and  innumerable  Bishops,  Admirals,  and 
'  miscellaneous  Functionaries,  are  advancing  gallantly  to 
'the  Anointed  Presence;  and  I  strive,  in  my  remote 
'privacy,  to  form  a  clear  picture  of  that  solemnity,  —  on 

lo  'a  sudden,  as  by  some  enchanter's  wand,  the  —  shall  I 
'speak  it?  —  the  Clothes  fly-off  the  whole  dramatic  corps  ; 
'and  Dukes,  Grandees,  Bishops,  Generals,  Anointed 
'  Presence  itself,  every  mother's  son  of  them,  stand 
'straddling    there,   not   a    shirt   on  them;    and   I    know 

15  'not  whether  to  laugh  or  weep.  This  physical  or  psy- 
'chical  infirmity,  in  which  perhaps  I  am  not  singular, 
'I  have,  after  hesitation,  thought  right  to  publish,  for  the 
'solace  of  those  afflicted  with  the  like.' 

Would  to  Heaven,  say  we,  thou  hadst  thought  right  to 

20  keep  it  secret  !  Who  is  there  now  that  can  read  the  five 
columns  of  Presentations  in  his  Morning  Newspaper 
without  a  shudder?  Hypochondriac  men,  and  all  men 
are  to  a  certain  extent  hypochondriac,  should  be  more 
gently  treated.     With  what  readiness  our  fancy,  in   this 

25  shattered  state  of  the  nerves,  follows  out  the  conse- 
quences which  Teufelsdrockh,  with  a  devilish  coolness, 
goes  on  to  draw  :  > 

'What  would  Majesty  do,  could  such  an  accident  befall 
'in  reality;  should  the  buttons  all  simultaneously  start, 

30  '  and  the  solid  wool  evaporate,  in  very  Deed,  as  here  in 
'  Dream  ?  Ach  Gott!  How  each  skulks  into  the  nearest 
'  hiding-place ;  their  high  State  Tragedy  {Hmipt-  und 
^  Staats-Action)  becomes  a  Pickleherring-Farce  to  weep 
'at,  which  is  the  worst  kind  of  Farce;  the  tables  (accord- 


ADAMITISM.  55 

*ing  to  Horace),  and  with  them,  the  whole  fabric  of 
'Government,  Legislation,  Property,  Police,  and  Civilised 
*  Society,  are  dissolved,  in  wails  and  howls.' 

Lives  the  man  that  can  figure  a  naked  Duke  of  Windle- 
straw  addressing  a  naked  House  of  Lords?  Imagination, 
choked  as  in  mephitic  air,  recoils  on  itself,  and  will  not 
forward  with  the  picture.  The  Woolsack,  the  Ministerial, 
the  Opposition  Benches  —  i?ifa7idiwi  !  infandiwi !  And 
yet  why  is  the  thing  impossible  t  Was  not  every  soul,  or 
rather  every  body,  of  these  Guardians  of  our  Liberties, 
naked,  or  nearly  so,  last  night;  'a  forked  Radish  with  a 
head  fantastically  carved'?  And  why  might  he  not,  did 
our  stern  Fate  so  order  it,  walk  out  to  St.  Stephen's,  as 
well  as  into  bed,  in  that  no-fashion ;  and  there,  with 
other  similar  Radishes,  hold  a  Bed  of  Justice  ?  '  Solace 
of  those  afflicted  with  the  like ! '  Unhappy  Teufels- 
drockh,  had  man  ever  such  a  '  physical  or  psychical  in- 
firmity '  before  ?  And  now  how  many,  perhaps,  may  thy 
unparalleled  confession  (which  we,  even  to  the  sounder 
British  world,  and  goaded-on  by  Critical  and  Biographi- 
cal duty,  grudge  to  re-impart)  incurably  infect  therewith ! 
Art  thou  the  malignest  of  Sansculottists,  or  only  the 
maddest  ? 

*  It  will  remain  to  be  examined,'  adds  the  inexorable 
Teufelsdrockh,  '  in  how  far  the  Scarecrow,  as  a  Clothed 
Person,  is  not  also  entitled  to  benefit  of  clergy,  and 
English  trial  by  jury:  nay  perhaps,  considering  his  high 
function  (for  is  not  he  too  a  Defender  of  Property,  and 
Sovereign  armed  with  the  terrors  of  the  Law  ?),  to  a  cer- 
tain royal  Immunity  and  Inviolability ;  which,  however, 
misers  and  the  meaner  class  of  persons  are  not  always 
voluntarily  disposed  to  grant  him.'     *     * 

^     *     '  O    my    friends,    we    are    (in    Yorick    Sterne's 
words)   but  as   *'  turkeys  driven,  with  a  stick  and  red 


5 6  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'clout,  to  the  market";  or  if  some  drivers,  as  they  do  in 
'  Norfolk,  take  a  dried  bladder  and  put  peas  in  it,  the 
'  rattle  thereof  terrifies  the  boldest ! ' 


CHAPTER    X. 


PURE    REASON. 


It  must  now  be  apparent  enough  that  our  Professor,  as 
5  above  hinted,  is  a  speculative  Radical,  and  of  the  very 
darkest  tinge  ;  acknowledging,  for  most  part,  in  the  so- 
lemnities and  paraphernalia  of  civilised  Life,  which  we 
make  so  much  of,  nothing  but  so  many  Cloth-rags, 
turkey-poles,  and  '  bladders  with  dried  peas.'     To  linger 

10  among  such  speculations,  longer  than  mere  Science  re- 
quires, a  discerning  public  can  have  no  wish.  For  our 
purposes  the  simple  fact  that  such  a  Awaked  World  is  pos- 
sible, nay  actually  exists  (under  the  Clothed  one),  will 
be   sufficient.     Much,  therefore,  we  omit  about  '  Kings 

15  wrestling  naked  on  the  green  with  Carmen,'  and  the 
Kings  being  thrown :  '  dissect  them  with  scalpels,'  says 
Teufelsdrockh  ;  '  the  same  viscera,  tissues,  livers,  lights, 
'  and  other  life-tackle  are  there:  examine  their  spiritual 
'  mechanism  ;    the  same  great  Need,   great   Greed,    and 

20  '  little  Faculty ;  nay  ten  to  one  but  the  Carman,  who  un- 
'  derstands  draught-cattle,  the  rimming  of  wheels,  some- 
'  thing  of  the  laws  of  unstable  and  stable  equilibrium, 
'with  other  branches  of  wagon-science,  and  has  actually 
'  put  forth  his  hand  and  operated  on  Nature,  is  the  more 

25  '  cunningly  gifted  of  the  two.  Whence,  then,  their  so  un- 
'  speakable  difference?  From  Clothes.'  Much  also  we 
shall  omit  about  confusion  of  Ranks,  and  Joan  and  My 


PURE    REASON.  ey 

Lady,  and  how  it  would  be  everywhere  '  Hail  fellow  well 
met,'  and  Chaos  were  come  again  :  all  which  to  any  one 
that  has  once  fairly  pictured-out  the  grand  mother-idea, 
Society  in  a  state  of  Naked?iess^  will  spontaneously  suggest 
itself.  Should  some  sceptical  individual  still  entertain  5 
doubts  whether  in  a  world  without  Clothes,  the  smallest 
Politeness,  Polity,  or  even  Police,  could  exist,  let  him 
turn  to  the  original  Volume,  and  view  there  the  bound- 
less Serbonian  Bog  of  Sansculottism,  stretching  sour  and 
pestilential:  over  which  we  have  lightly  flown ;  where  not  10 
only  whole  armies  but  whole  nations  might  sink  !  If 
indeed  the  following  argument,  in  its  brief  riveting 
emphasis,  be  not  of  itself  incontrovertible  and  final : 

'  Are  we  Opossums  ;  have  we  natural  Pouches,  like  the 
'  Kangaroo  ?     Or  how,  without  Clothes,  could  we  possess  15 
'  the  master-organ,  soul's  seat,  and  true  pineal  gland  of 
'  the  Body  Social :    I  mean,  a  Purse  ? ' 

Nevertheless  it  is  impossible  to  hate  Professor  Teufels- 
drockh ;  at  worst,  one  knows  not  whether  to  hate  or  to 
love  him.  For  though,  in  looking  at  the  fair  tapestry  of  20 
human  Life,  with  its  royal  and  even  sacred  figures,  he 
dwells  not  on  the  obverse  alone,  but  here  chiefly  on  the 
reverse  ;  and  indeed  turns  out  the  rough  seams,  tatters, 
and  manifold  thrums  of  that  unsightly  wrong-side,  with 
an  almost  diabolic  patience  and  indifference,  which  must  25 
have  sunk  him  in  the  estimation  of  most  readers,  —  there 
is  that  within  which  unspeakably  distinguishes  him  from 
all  other  past  and  present  Sansculottists.  The  grand 
unparalleled  peculiarity  of  Teufelsdrockh  is,  that  with  all 
this  Descendentalism,  he  combines  a  Transcendentalism, 
no  less  superlative  ;  whereby  if  on  the  one  hand  he  de- 
grade man  below  most  animals,  except  those  jacketed 
Gouda  Cows,  he,  on  the  other,  exalts  him  beyond  the 
visible  Heavens,  almost  to  an  equality  with  the  Gods. 


S8 


SARTOR    RESARTUS. 


'To  the  eye  of  vulgar  Logic,'  says  he,  'what  is  man? 
An  omnivorous  I]iped  that  wears  Breeches.  To  the  eye 
of  Pure  Reason,  what  is  he  ?  A  Soul,  a  Spirit,  and 
divine  Apparition.  Round  his  mysterious  Me,  there 
lies,  under  all  those  wool-rags,  a  Garment  of  Flesh  (or 
of  Senses),  contextured  in  the  Loom  of  Heaven  ;  where- 
by he  is  revealed  to  his  like,  and  dwells  with  them  in 
Union  and  Division  ;  and  sees  and  fashions  for  him- 
self a  Universe,  with  azure  Starry  Spaces,  and  long 
Thousands  of  Years.  Deep-hidden  is  he  under  that 
strange  Garment  ;  amid  Sounds  and  Colours  and  Forms, 
as  it  were,  swathed-in,  and  inextricably  over-shrouded: 
yet  it  is  skywoven,  and  worthy  of  a  God.  Stands  he 
not  thereby  in  the  centre  of  Immensities,  in  the  conflux 
15  'of  Eternities?  He  feels  ;  power  has  been  given  him  to 
know,  to  believe  ;  nay  does  not  the  spirit  of  Love,  free 
in  its  celestial  primeval  brightness,  even  here,  though 
but  for  moments  look  through  ?  Well  said  Saint  Chrys- 
ostom,  with  his  lips  of  gold,  "  the  true  Shekinah  is 
Man":  where  else  is  the  God's-Presence  manifested 
not  to  our  eyes  only,  but  to  our  hearts,  as  in  our  fellow 
man  ? ' 

In  such  passages,  unhappily  too  rare,  the  high  Platonic 

Mysticism  of  our  Author,  which   is  perhaps  the  funda- 

25  mental  element  of  his  nature,  bursts  forth,  as  it  were,  in 

full  flood  ;    and,  through  all  the  vapour  and  tarnish  of 

what  is  often  so  perverse,   so  mean  in  his  exterior  and 

environment,  we  seem  to  look  into  a  whole  inward  Sea 

of  Light  and  Love  ;  —  though,   alas,  the  grim  coppery 

30  clouds  soon  roll  together  again,  and  hide  it  from  view. 

Such  tendency  to  Mysticism  is  everywhere  traceable  in 

this  man ;    and  indeed,  to  attentive  readers,  must  have 

been  long  ago  apparent.     Nothing  that  he  sees  but  has 

more  than  a  common  meaning,  but  has  two  meanings: 


PURE   REASON. 


59 


thus,  if  in  the  highest  Imperial  Sceptre  and  Charlemagne- 
Mantle,  as  well  as  in  the  poorest  Ox-goad  and  Gipsy- 
Blanket,  he  finds  Prose,  Decay,  Contemptibility ;  there  is 
in  each  sort  Poetry  also,  and  a  reverend  Worth.  For 
Matter,  were  it  never  so  despicable,  is  Spirit^  the  mani-  5 
festation  of  Spirit:  were  it  never  so  honourable,  can  it  be 
more  ?  The  thing  Visible,  nay  the  thing  Imagined,  the 
thing  in  any  way  conceived  as  Visible,  what  is  it  but  a 
Garment,  a  Clothing  of  the  higher,  celestial  Invisible, 
'  unimaginable,  formless,  dark  with  excess  of  bright  ? '  10 
Under  which  point  of  view  the  following  passage,  so 
strange  in  purport,  so  strange  in  phrase,  seems  character- 
istic enough: 

'  The  beginning  of  all  Wisdom  is  to  look  fixedly  on 
'  Clothes,  or  even  with  armed  eyesight,  till  they  become  15 
'  transparent.  "  The  Philosopher,"  says  the  wisest  of  this 
'age,  ''must  station  himself  in  the  middle":  how  true  ! 
'  The  Philosopher  is  he  to  whom  the  Highest  has 
'  descended,  and  the  Lowest  has  mounted  up;  who  is  the 
'  equal  and  kindly  brother  of  all.  20 

'  Shall  we  tremble  before  clothwebs  and  cobwebs, 
'whether  woven  in  Arkwright  looms,  or  by  the  silent 
'  Arachnes  that  weave  unrestingly  in  our  Imagination  ? 
'  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  what  is  there  that  we  cannot 
'  love  ;  since  all  was  created  by  God  ?  25 

'  Happy  he  who  can  look  through  the  Clothes  of  a 
'  Man  (the  woollen,  and  fleshly,  and  official  Bank-paper, 
'  and  State-paper  Clothes),  into  the  Man  himself ;  and 
'  discern,  it  may  be,  in  this  or  the  other  Dread  Potentate, 
'  a  more  or  less  incompetent  Digestive-apparatus  ;  yet  30 
'  also  an  inscrutable  venerable  Mystery,  in  the  meanest 
'  Tinker  that  sees  with  eyes  ! ' 

For  the  rest,  as  is  natural  to  a  man  of  this  kind,  he 
deals   much   in   the    feeling  of  Wonder;    insists   on  the 


6o  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

necessity  and  high  worth  of  universal  Wonder  ;  which  he 
holds  to  be  the  only  reasonable  temper  for  the  denizen 
of  so  singular  a  Planet  as  ours.  '  Wonder,'  says  he,  '  is 
'  the  basis  of  Worship  :  the  reign  of  wonder  is  perennial, 
5  '  indestructible  in  Man ;  only  at  certain  stages  (as  the 
'present),  it  is,  for  some  short  season,  a  reign  i7i partibus 
^  infidel ium.''  That  progress  of  Science,  which  is  to  de- 
stroy Wonder,  and  in  its  stead  substitute  Mensuration 
and  Numeration,  finds  small  favour  with  Teufelsdrockh, 
10  much  as  he  otherwise  venerates  these  two  latter  pro- 
cesses. 

'  Shall  your  Science,'  exclaims  he,  '  proceed  in  the  small 

*  chink-lighted,  or  even  oil-lighted,  underground  \vorkshop 
'  of  Logic  alone  ;  and  man's  mind  become  an  Arithmetical 

15  'Mill,  whereof  Memory  is  the  Hopper,  and  mere  Tables 
'  of  Sines  and  Tangents,  Codification,  and  Treatises  of 

*  what  you  call  Political  Economy,  are  the  Meal  ?  And 
'what  is  that  Science,  which  the  scientific  head  alone, 
'  were  it  screwed  off,  and  (like  the  Doctor's  in  the  Arabian 

20  '  Tale)  set  in  a  basin  to  keep  it  alive,  could  prosecute 
'  without  shadow  of  a  heart,  —  but  one  other  of  the  me- 
'  chanical  and  menial  handicrafts,  for  which  the  Scientific 
'  Head  (having  a  Soul  in  it)  is  too  noble  an  organ .?  I 
'  mean  that  Thought  without  Reverence  is  barren,  perhaps 

25  'poisonous;  at  best,  dies  like  cookery  with  the  day  that 
'  called  it  forth ;  does  not  live,  like  sowing,  in  successive 
'tilths  and  wider-spreading  harvests,  bringing  food  and 
'  plenteous  increase  to  all  Time.' 

In  such  wise  does  Teufelsdrockh  deal  hits,  harder  or 

30  softer,  according  to  ability ;  yet  ever,  as  we  would  fain 
persuade  ourselves,  with  charitable  intent.  Above  all, 
that  class  of  '  Logic-choppers,  and  treble-pipe  Scoffers, 
'  and  professed  Enemies  to  Wonder ;  who,  in  these  days, 
'  so  numerously  patrol  as  night-constables  about  the  Me- 


PURE   REASON.  6i 

'  chanics'  Institute  of  Science,  and  cackle,  like  true  Old- 
'  Roman  geese  and  goslings  round  their  Capitol,  on  any 
'  alarm,  or  on  none ;  nay  who  often,  as  illuminated  Scep- 
'  tics,  walk  abroad  into  peaceable  society,  in  full  daylight, 
'  with  rattle  and  lantern,  and  insist  on  guiding  you  and  5 
'  guarding  you  therewith,  though  the  Sun  is  shining,  and 
'the  street  populous  with  mere  justice-loving  men:'  that 
whole  class  is  inexpressibly  wearisome  to  him.  Hear 
with  what  uncommon  animation  he  perorates : 

'  The  man  who  cannot  wonder,  who  does  not  habitually  10 
'  wonder  (and  worship),  were  he  President  of  innumerable 
'  Royal  Societies,  and  carried  the  whole  Mecanique  Celeste 
'  and  HegeVs  Philosophy,  and  the  epitome  of  all  Labora- 
'tories  and  Observatories  with  their  results,  in  his  single 
'head,  —  is  but  a  Pair  of  Spectacles  behind  which  there  15 
'  is  no  Eye.     Let  those  who  have  Eyes  look  through  him, 

*  then  he  may  be  useful. 

'  Thou  wilt  have  no  Mystery  and  Mysticism  ;  wilt  walk 

*  through  thy  world  by  the  sunshine  of  what  thou  callest 

'  Truth,  or  even  by  the  hand-lamp  of  what  I  call  Attorney-  20 
'  Logic  ;  and  "  explain  "  all,  "account  "  for  all,  or  believe 
'  nothing  of  it  ?     Nay,  thou  wilt  attempt  laughter  ;  whoso 
'  recognises  the  unfathomable,   all-pervading  domain   of 

*  Mystery,  which  is  everywhere  under  our  feet  and  among 

'  our  hands ;  to  whom  the  Universe  is  an  Oracle  and  25 
'Temple,  as  well  as  a  Kitchen  and  Cattle-stall,  —  he 
'  shall  be  a  delirious  Mystic ;  to  him  thou,  with  sniffing 
'charity,  wilt  protrusively  proffer  thy  hand-lamp,  and 
'  shriek,  as  one  injured,  when  he  kicks  his  foot  through 
'it.?  —  Armer  Teiifel!  Doth  not  thy  cow  calve,  doth  not  30 
'  thy  bull  gender  ?  Thou  thyself,  wert  thou  not  born,  wilt 
'  thou  not  die  1  "  Explain  "  me  all  this,  or  do  one  of  two 
'  things  :  Retire  into  private  places  with  thy  foolish  cackle; 
'  or,  what  were  better,  give  it  up,  and  weep,  not  that  the 


62  SARTOR  RESARTUS. 

'  reign  of  wonder  is  done,  and  God's  world  all  disembel- 
'  lished  and  prosaic,  but  that  thou  hitherto  art  a  Dilettante 
'  and  sandblind  Pedant.' 


CHAPTER   XL 


PROSPECTIVE. 


The  philosophy  of  Clothes  is  now  to  all  readers,  as  we 
5  predicted  it  would  do,  unfolding  itself  into  new  bound- 
less expansions,  of  a  cloudcapt,  almost  chimerical  aspect, 
yet  not  without  azure  loomings  in  the  far  distance,  and 
streaks  as  of  an  Elysian  brightness  ;  ,the  highly  question- 
able purport  and  promise  of  which  it  is  becoming  more 
10  and  more  important  for  us  to  ascertain.     Is  that  a  real 
Elysian  brightness,  cries  many  a  timid  wayfarer,  or  the 
reflex  of  Pandemonian  lava  ?     Is  it  of  a  truth  leading  us 
into  beatific  Asphodel  meadows,  or  the  yellow-burning 
marl  of  a  Hell-on- Earth  ? 
15       Our  Professor,Tike  other  Mystics,  whether  delirious  or 
inspired,  gives  an  Editor  enough  to  do.     Ever  higher  and 
dizzier   are   the  heights  he  leads  us  to ;  more   piercing, 
all-comprehending,    all-confounding    are    his    views    and 
glances.     For  example,  this  of  Nature  being  not  an  Aggre- 
20  gate  but  a  Whole : 

'  Well  sang  the  Hebrew  Psalmist :  ''  If  I  take  the  wings 
of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
universe,  God  is  there."  Thou  too,  O  cultivated  reader, 
who  too  probably  art  no  Psalmist,  but  a  Prosaist,  know- 
25  ~  ing  God  only  by  tradition,  knowest  thou  any  corner  of 
the  world  where  at  least  Force  is  not  ?  The  drop  which 
thou  shakest  from  thy  wet  hand  rests  not  where  it  falls. 


PROSPECTIVE.  63 

'  but  tomorrow  thou  findest  it  swept  away ;  already,  on 
'  the  wings  of  the  Northwind,  it  is  nearing  the  Tropic  of 
'  Cancer.  How  came  it  to  evaporate,  and  not  He  motion- 
'  less  ?     Thinkest  thou  there  is  aught  motionless  ;  without 

*  Force  and  utterly  dead  ?  5 

'  As  I  rode  through  the  Schwarzwald,  I  said  to  myself : 
'  That  little  fire  which  glows  star-like  across  the  dark- 
'  growing  {iiachte?ide)  moor,  where  the  sooty  smith  bends 
'  over  his  anvil,  and  thou  hopest  to  replace  thy  lost  horse- 
'  shoe,  —  is  it  a  detached,  separated  speck,  cut-off  from  10 
'  the  whole  Universe  ;  or  indissolubly  joined  to  the  whole  ? 
'  Thou  fool,  that  smithy-fire  was  (primarily)  kindled  at 
'  the  Sun  ;  is  fed  by  air  that  circulates  from  before  Noah's 
'  Deluge,   from  beyond  the  Dogstar  ;  therein,  with  Iron 

*  Force,  and  Coal  Force,  and  the  far  stranger  Force  of  15 
'  Man,  are  cunning  affinities  and  battles  and  victories  of 

'  Force  brought  about :  it  is  a  little  ganglion,  or  nervous 
'  centre,  in  the  great  vital  system  of  Immensity.  Call  it, 
'  if  thou  wilt,  an  unconscious  Altar,  kindled  on  the  bosom 
'  of  the  All ;  whose  iron  sacrifice,  whose  iron  smoke  and  20 
'  influence  reach  quite  through  the  All ;  whose  Dingy 
'  Priest,  not  by  word,  yet  by  brain  and  sinew,  preaches 
'  forth  the  mystery  of  Force  ;  nay,  preaches  forth  (exoteri- 
'  cally  enough)  one  little  textlet  from  the  Gospel  of  Free- 

*  dom,  the  Gospel  of  Man's  Force,  commanding,  and  one  25 
'  day  to  be  all-commanding. 

'  Detached,  separated  !  I  say  there  is  no  such  separa- 
'  tion  :  nothing  hitherto  was  ever  stranded,  cast  aside ; 
'  but  all,  were  it  only  a  withered  leaf,  works  together  with 
'  all ;  is  borne  forward  on  the  bottomless,  shoreless  flood  30 
'  of  Action,  and  lives  through  perpetual  metamorphoses. 
"  The  withered  leaf  is  not  dead  and  lost,  there  are  Forces 
'  in  it  and  around  it,  though  working  in  inverse  order ; 
'  else  how  could  it  ivt  I     Despise  not  the  rag  from  which 


64 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


15 


25 


30 


'  man  makes  Paper,  or  the  litter  from  which  the  Earth  makes 
'  Corn.  Rightly  viewed  no  meanest  object  is  insignifi- 
'  cant ;  all  objects  are  as  windows,  through  which  the 
'  philosophic  eye  looks  into  Infinitude  itself.' 

Again,  leaving  that  wondrous  Schwarzwald  Smithy- 
Altar,  what  vacant,  high-sailing  air-ships  are  these,  and 
whither  will  they  sail  with  us  ? 

'  All  visible  things  are  emblems ;  what  thou  seest  is 
not  there  on  its  own  account ;  strictly  taken,  is  not  there 
at  all :  Matter  exists  only  spiritually,  and  to  represent 
some  Idea,  and  body  it  forth.  Hence  Clothes,  as  despic- 
able as  we  think  them,  are  so  unspeakably  significant. 
Clothes,  from  the  King's  mantle  downwards,  are  Emble- 
matic, not  of  want  only,  but  of  a  manifold  cunning  Vic- 
tory over  Want.  On  the  other  hand,  all  Emblematic 
things  are  properly  Clothes,  thought-woven  or  hand- 
woven  :  must  not  the  Imagination  weave  Garments, 
visible  Bodies,  wherein  the  else  invisible  creations  and 
inspirations  of  our  Reason  are,  like  Spirits,  revealed, 
and  first  become  all-powerful ;  —  the  rather  if,  as  we 
often  see,  the  Hand  too  aid  her,  and  (by  wool  Clothes 
or  otherwise)  reveal  such  even  to  the  outward  eye  ? 

'  Men  are  properly  said  to  be  clothed  with  Authority, 
clothed  with  Beauty,  with  Curses,  and  the  like.  Nay, 
if  you  consider  it,  what  is  Man  himself,  and  his  whole 
terrestrial  Life,  but  an  Emblem  ;  a  Clothing  or  visible 
Garment  for  that  divine  Me  of  his,  cast  hither,  like  a 
light-particle,  down  from  Heaven  ?  Thus  is  he  said  also 
to  be  clothed  with  a  Body. 

'  Language  is  called  the  Garment  of  Thought :  how- 
ever, it  should  rather  be,  Language  is  the  Flesh-Garment, 
the  Body,  of  Thought.  I  said  that  Imagination  wove 
this  Flesh-Garment ;  and  does  not  she  ?  Metaphors  are 
her  stuff  :  examine  Language  ;  what,  if  you  except  some 


PROSPECTIVE. 


65 


few  primitive  elements  (of  natural  sound),  what  is  it  all 
but  Metaphors,  recognised  as  such,  or  no  longer  recog- 
nised :  still  fluid  and  florid,  or  now  solid-grown  and 
colourless  ?  If  those  same  primitive  elements  are  the 
osseous  fixtures  in  the  Flesh-Garment,  Language,  —  5 
then  are  Metaphors  its  muscles  and  tissues  and  living 
integuments.  An  unmetaphorical  style  you  shall  in  vain 
seek  for :  is  not  your  very  Attention  a  Stretching-to  ? 
The  difference  lies  here  :  some  styles  are  lean,  adust, 
wiry,  the  muscle  itself  seems  osseous  ;  some  are  even  10 
quite  pallid,  hunger-bitten,  and  dead-looking ;  while 
others  again  glow  in  the  flush  of  health  and  vigorous 
self-growth,  sometimes  (as  in  my  own  case)  not  without 
an  apoplectic  tendency.  Moreover,  there  are  sham 
Metaphors,  which  overhanging  that  same  Thought's-  15 
Body  (best  naked),  and  deceptively  bedizening,  or  bol- 
stering it  out,  maybe  called  its  false  stuffings,  superfluous 
show-cloaks  {Fiitz-Md?itel),  and  tawdry  woollen  rags ; 
whereof  he  that  runs  and  reads  may  gather  whole  ham- 
pers, —  and  burn  them.'  20 
Than  which  paragraph  on  Metaphors  did  the  reader  ever 
chance  to  see  a  more  surprisingly  metaphorical  ?  However, 
that  is  not  our  chief  grievance  ;  the  Professor  continues  : 
'Why  multiply  instances?  It  is  written,  the  Heavens 
and  the  Earth  shall  fade  away  like  a  Vesture  ;  which  in-  25 
deed  they  are  :  the  Time-vesture  of  the  Eternal.  What- 
soever sensibly  exists,  whatsoever  represents  Spirit  to 
Spirit,  is  properly  a  Clothing,  a  suit  of  Raiment,  put  on 
for  a  season,  and  to  be  laid  off.  Thus  in  this  one  preg- 
nant subject  of  Clothes,  rightly  understood,  is  included  30 
all  that  men  have  thought,  dreamed,  done,  and  been  : 
the  whole  External  Universe  and  what  it  holds  is  but 
Clothing ;  and  the  essence  of  all  Science  lies  in  the 
Philosophy  of  Clothes.' 


66  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

Towards  these  dim  infinitely-expanded  regions,  close- 
bordering  on  the  impalpable  Inane,  it  is  not  without  ap- 
prehension, and  perpetual  difficulties,  that  the  Editor 
sees  himself  journeying  and  struggling.  Till  lately  a 
5  cheerful  daystar  of  hope  hung  before  him,  in  the  ex- 
pected Aid  of  Hofrath  Heuschrecke ;  which  daystar, 
however,  melts  now,  not  into  the  red  of  morning,  but 
into  a  vague,  grey  half-light,  uncertain  whether  dawn  of 
day  or  dusk  of  utter  darkness.     For  the  last  week,  these 

10  so-called  Biographical  Documents  are  in  his  hand.  By 
the  kindness  of  a  Scottish  Hamburg  Merchant,  whose 
name,  known  to  the  whole  mercantile  world,  he  must  not 
mention  ;  but  whose  honourable  courtesy,  now  and  often 
before  spontaneously  manifested  to  him,  a  mere  literary 

15  stranger,  he  cannot  soon  forget,  —  the  bulky  Weissnicht- 
wo  Packet,  with  all  its  Customhouse  seals,  foreign  hiero- 
glyphs, and  miscellaneous  tokens  of  Travel,  arrived  here 
in  perfect  safety,  and  free  of  cost.  The  reader  shall  now 
fancy  with  what  hot  haste  it  was  broken  up,  with  what 

20  breathless  expectation  glanced  over ;  and,  alas,  with 
what  unquiet  disappointment  it  has,  since  then,  been 
often  thrown  down,  and  again  taken  up. 

Hofrath  Heuschrecke,  in  a  too  long-winded  Letter,  full 
of   compliments,  Weissnichtwo   politics,   dinners,    dining 

25  repartees,  and  other  ephemeral  trivialities,  proceeds  to 
remind  us  of  what  we  knew  well  already :  that  however 
it  may  be  with  Metaphysics,  and  other  abstract  Science 
originating  in  the  Head  (^Vet-stand)  alone,  no  Life-Phil- 
osophy {Lebensphilosophie),  such  as  this  of  Clothes  pre- 

30  tends  to  be,  which  originates  equally  in  the  Character 
{Gemilth)^  and  equally  speaks  thereto,  can  attain  its  sig- 
nificance till  the  Character  itself  is -known  and  seen; 
'  till  the  Author's  View  of  the  World  (  Weltanskht),  and 
'  how  he  actively  and  passively  came  by  such  view,  are 


PROSPECTIVE.  67 

'  clear  :  in   short  till  a  Biography  of  him  has  been  phil- 
'  osophico-poetically  written,   and  philosophico-poetically 
'read.'     'Nay,'  adds  he,  'were  the   speculative  scientific 
'Truth  even  known,  you  still,  in  this  inquiring  age,  ask 
'yourself.  Whence  came  it,  and  Why,  and  How?  —  and     5 
'rest  not,  till,  if  no  better  may  be,  Fancy  have  shaped- 
'out  an  answer;  and  either  in  the  authentic  lineaments 
'of    Fact,   or    the    forged    ones    of    Fiction,   a    complete 
'picture  and  Genetical  History  of  the  Man  and  his  spirit- 
'ual  Endeavour  lies  before  you.     But  why,'  says  the  Hof-  10 
rath,  and  indeed  say  we,  'do  I  dilate  on  the  uses  of  our 
'Teufelsdrockh's  Biography?     The  great  Herr  Minister 
'von  Goethe  has  penetratingly  remarked  that  "Man  is  ' 
'properly  the  only  object  that  interests  man  :"  thus  I  too 
'have  noted,  that  in  Weissnichtwo  our  whole  conversa-  15 
'tion  is  little  or  nothing  else  but  Biography  or  Auto-Biog- 
'raphy;   ever  humano-anecdotical  {ine7ischlich-a7iecdotisch). 
'Biography  is  by  nature  the  most  universally  profitable, 
'universally  pleasant  of  all  things;  especially  Biography 
'of  distinguished  individuals.  20 

'  By  this  time,  mciii  Verehrtester  (my  Most  Esteemed),' 

continues  he,  with  an  eloquence  which,  unless  the  words 

be  purloined  from  Teufelsdrockh,  or  some  trick  of  his,  as 

we  suspect,  is  well  nigh  unaccountable,  'by  this  time  you 

are    fairly   plunged   (veftieft)    in    that   mighty  forest   of  25 

Clothes-Philosophy ;  and  looking  round,  as  all  readers 

do,    with    astonishment    enough.     Such    portions    and 

passages  as  you  have    already  mastered,   and    brought 

to   paper,   could    not    but    awaken    a    strange   curiosity 

touching  the  mind  they  issued  from ;  the  perhaps  un-  30 

paralleled    psychical    mechanism,    which    manufactured 

such  matter,  and  emitted  it  to  the  light  of  day.     Had 

Teufelsdrockh  also  a  father  and  mother ;  did  he,  at  one 

time,  wear  drivel-bibs,  and  live  on  spoon-meat?     Did  he 


68  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

'  ever,  in  rapture  and  tears,  clasp  a  friend's  bosom  to  his ; 
'looks  he  also  wistfully  into  the  long  burial-aisle  of  the 
'Past,  where  only  winds,  and  their  low  harsh  moan, 
'give  inarticulate  answer?  Has  he  fought  duels  ;  — good 
5  '  Heaven  !  how  did  he  comport  himself  when  in  Love  ? 
'By  what  singular  stair-steps,  in  short,  and  subterranean 
'passages,  and  sloughs  of  Despair,  and  steep  Pisgah  hills, 
'has  he  reached  this  wonderful  prophetic  Hebron  (a  true 
'Old-Clothes  Jewry)  where  he  now  dwells? 

lo  'To  all  these  natural  questions  the  voice  of  Public 
'  History  is  as  yet  silent.  Certain  only  that  he  has  been, 
'and  is,  a  Pilgrim,  and  Traveller  from  a  far  Country  ;  more 
'  or  less  footsore  and  travel-soiled  ;  has  parted  with  road- 
' companions;  fallen  among   thieves,   been   poisoned  by 

15  'bad  cookery,  blistered  with  bugbites ;  nevertheless,  at 
'every  stage  (for  they  have  let  him  pass),  has  had  the 
'  Bill  to  discharge.  But  the  whole  particulars  of  his  Route, 
'his  Weather-observations,  the  picturesque  Sketches  he 
'took,    though    all    regularly   jotted    down    (in    indelible 

20  'sympathetic-ink  by  an  invisible  interior  Penman),  are 
'  these  nowhere  forthcoming  ?  Perhaps  quite  lost :  one 
'other  leaf  of  that  mighty  Volume  (of  human  Memory) 
'left  to  fly  abroad,  unprinted,  unpublished,  unbound  up, 
'  as  waste  paper ;  and  rot,  the  sport  of  rainy  winds  ? 

25  '  No,  verehrtester  He7'r  Ilerausgeber,  in  no  wise  !  I  here, 
'by  the  unexampled  favour  you  stand  in  with  our  Sage, 
'  send  not  a  Biography  only,  but  an  Autobiography  :  at 
'  least  the  materials  for  such ;  wherefrom,  if  I  misreckon 
'  not,  your  perspicacity  will  draw  fullest  insight :  and  so 

30  'the  whole  Philosophy  and  Philosopher  of  Clothes  will 
'stand  clear  to  the  wondering  eyes  of  England,  nay  thence, 
'through  America,  through  Hindostan,  and  the  antipodal 
'New  Holland,  finally  conquer  (eimieJwieti)  great  part  of 
'this  terrestrial  Planet!' 


PROSPECTIVE.  69 

And  now  let  the  sympathising  reader  judge  of  our 
feeling  when,  in  place  of  this  same  Autobiography  with 
'fullest  insight,'  we  find  —  Six  considerable  Paper  Bags, 
carefully  sealed,  and  marked  successively,  in  gilt  China- 
ink,  with  the  symbols  of  the  Six  southern  Zodiacal  Signs,  5 
beginning  at  Libra ;  in  the  inside  of  which  sealed  Bags 
lie  miscellaneous  masses  of  Sheets,  and  oftener  Shreds 
and  Snips,  written  in  Professor  Teufelsdrockh's  scarce 
legible  cursiv-schrift ;  and  treating  of  all  imaginable 
things  under  the  Zodiac  and  above  it,  but  of  his  own  10 
personal  history  only  at  rare  intervals  and  then  in  the 
most  enigmatic  manner. 

Whole  fascicles  there  are,  wherein  the  Professor,  or,  as 
he  here  speaking  in  the  third  person  calls  himself,  'the 
Wanderer,'  is  not  once  named.  Then  again,  amidst  what  15 
seems  to  be  a  Metaphysico-theological  Disquisition, 
'Detached  Thoughts  on  the  Steam-engine,'  or,  'The  con- 
tinued Possibility  of  Prophecy,'  we  shall  meet  with  some 
quite  private,  not  unimportant  Biographical  fact.  On 
certain  sheets  stand  Dreams,  authentic  or  not,  while  the  20 
circumjacent  waking  Actions  are  omitted.  Anecdotes, 
oftenest  without  date  of  place  or  time,  fly  loosely  on 
separate  slips,  like  Sibylline  leaves.  Interspersed  also 
are  long  purely  Autobiographical  delineations ;  yet  with- 
out connexion,  without  recognisable  coherence ;  so  un-  25 
important,  so  superfluously  minute,  they  almost  remind 
us  of  'P.  P.  Clerk  of  this  Parish.'  Thus  does  famine  of 
intelligence  alternate  with  waste.  Selection,  order,  ap- 
pears to  be  unknown  to  the  Professor.  In  all  Bags  the 
same  imbroglio ;  only  perhaps  in  the  Bag  Capricorn,  30 
and  those  near  it,  the  confusion  a  little  worse  con- 
founded. Close  by  a  rather  eloquent  Oration,  'On  re- 
ceiving the  Doctor's-Hat,'  lie  wash-bills,  marked  bezaJilt 
(settled).      His    Travels    are    indicated   by  the    Street- 


yo  SAR7VR   RESARTUS. 

Advertisements  of  the  various  cities  he  has  visited ;  of 
which  Street- Advertisements,  in  most  living  tongues,  here 
is  perhaps  the  completest  collection  extant. 

So  that  if  the  Clothes-Volume  itself  was  too  like  a 

5  Chaos,  we  have  now  instead  of  the  solar  Luminary  that 
should  still  it,  the  airy  Limbo  which  by  intermixture  will 
farther  volatilise  and  discompose  it !  As  we  shall  per- 
haps see  it  our  duty  ultimately  to  deposit  these  Six 
Paper-Bags  in  the  British  Museum,  farther  description, 

10  and  all  vituperation  of  them,  may  be  spared.  Biography 
or  Autobiography  of  Teufelsdrockh  there  is,  clearly 
enough,  none  to  be  gleaned  here  :  at  most  some  sketchy, 
shadowy  fugitive  likeness  of  him  may,  by  unheard-of 
efforts,  partly  of  intellect,  partly  of  imagination,  on  the 

15  side  of  Editor  and  of  Reader,  rise  up  between  them. 
Only  as  a  gaseous-chaotic  Appendix  to  that  aqueous- 
chaotic  Volume  can  the  contents  of  the  Six  Bags  hover 
round  us,  and  portions  thereof  be  incorporated  with  our 
delineation  of  it. 

20  Daily  and  nightly  does  the  Editor  sit  (with  green 
spectacles)  deciphering  these  unimaginable  Documents 
from  their  perplexed  ciD'siv-scJwift ;  collating  them  with 
the  almost  equally  unimaginable  Volume,  which  stands 
in  legible  print.     Over  such  a  universal  medley  of  high 

25  and  low,  of  hot,  cold,  moist  and  dry,  is  he  here  struggling 
(by  union  of  like  with  like,  which  is  Method)  to  build  a 
firm  Bridge  for  British  travellers.  Never  perhaps  since 
our  first  Bridge-builders,  Sin  and  Death,  built  that 
stupendous  Arch  from  Hell-gate  to  the  Earth,  did  any 

30  Pontifex,  or  Pontiff,  undertake  such  a  task  as  the  present 
Editor.  For  in  this  Arch  too,  leading,  ^s  we  humbly 
presume,  far  otherwards  than  that  grand  primeval  one, 
the  materials  are  to  be  fished-up  from  the  weltering  deep, 
and  down  from  the  simmering  air,  here  one  mass,  there 


PROSPECTIVE. 


71 


another,  and  cunningly  cemented,  while  the  elements 
boil  beneath :  nor  is  there  any  supernatural  force  to  do 
it  with;  but  simply  the  Diligence  and  feeble  thinking 
Faculty  of  an  English  Editor,  endeavouring  to  evolve 
printed  Creation  out  of  a  German  printed  and  written  5 
Chaos,  wherein,  as  he  shoots  to  and  fro  in  it,  gathering, 
clutching,  piecing  the  Why  to  the  far-distant  Wherefore, 
his  whole  Faculty  and  Self  are  like  to  be  swallowed  up. 

Patiently,  under  these  incessant  toils  and  agitations, 
does  the  Editor,  dismissing  all  anger,  see  his  otherwise  10 
robust  health  declining ;  some  fraction  of  his  allotted 
natural  sleep  nightly  leaving  him,  and  little  but  an  in- 
flamed nervous-system  to  be  looked  for.  What  is  the  use 
of  health,  or  of  life,  if  not  to  do  some  work  therewith  ? 
And  what  work  nobler  than  transplanting  foreign  15 
Thought  into  the  barren  domestic  soil ;  except  indeed 
planting  Thought  of  your  own,  which  the  fewest  are 
privileged  to  do  ?  Wild  as  it  looks,  this  Philosophy  of 
Clothes,  can  we  ever  reach  its  real  meaning,  promises  to 
reveal  new-coming  Eras,  the  first  dim  rudiments  and  20 
already-budding  germs  of  a  nobler  Era,  in  Universal 
History.  Is  not  such  a  prize  worth  some  striving? 
Forward  with  us,  courageous  reader ;  be  it  towards 
failure,  or  towards  success  !  The  latter  thou  sharest 
with  us,  the  former  also  is  not  all  our  own.  25 


book:  II. 


CHAPTER    I. 


GENESIS. 


In  a  psychological  point  of  view,  it  is  perhaps  ques- 
tionable whether  from  birth  and  genealogy,  how  closely 
scrutinised  soever,  much  insight  is  to  be  gained.  Never- 
theless, as  in  every  phenomenon  the  Beginning  remains 

5  always  the  most  notable  moment ;  so,  with  regard  to  any 
great  man,  we  rest  not  till,  for  our  scientific  profit  or  not, 
the  whole  circumstances  of  his  first  appearance  in  this 
planet,  and  what  manner  of  Public  Entry  he  made,  are 
with  utmost  completeness    rendered    manifest.     To  the 

10  Genesis  of  our  Clothes-Philosopher,  then,  be  this  First 
Chapter  consecrated.  Unhappily,  indeed,  he  seems  to 
be  of  quite  obscure  extraction ;  uncertain,  we  might 
almost  say,  whether  of  any:  so  that  this  Genesis  of  his 
can  properly  be  nothing  but  an  Exodus  (or  transit  out  of 

15  Invisibility  into  Visibility);  whereof  the  preliminary  por- 
tion is  nowhere  forthcoming. 

'  In  the  village  of  Entepfuhl,'  thus  writes  he,  in  the  Bag 
Libra,  on  various  Papers,  which  we  arrange  with  diffi- 
culty, '  dwelt  Andreas  Futteral  and  his  wife  ;  childless, 

20  '  in  still  seclusion,  and  cheerful  though  now  verging 
'  towards  old  age.  Andreas  had  been  grenadier  Sergeant, 
'  and  even  regimental  Schoolmaster  under  Frederick  the 
'  Great ;  but  now,  quitting  the  halbert  and  ferule  for  the 
'  spade  and  pruning-hook,  cultivated  a  little  Orchard,  on 


GENESIS. 


73 


'  the  produce  of  which,  he  Cincinnatus-like,  lived  not 
'  without  dignity.  Fruits,  the  peach,  the  apple,  the  grape, 
'  with  other  varieties  came  in  their  season  ;  all  which 
'  Andreas  knew  how  to  sell :  on  evenings  he  smoked 
'  largely,  or  read  (as  beseemed  a  regimental  School-  5 
'master),  and  talked  to  neighbours  that  would  listen 
'about  the  Victory  of  Rossbach;  and  how  Fritz  the  Only 
'  {licr  Elnzige)  had  once  with  his  own  royal  lips  spoken 
'  to  him,  had  been  pleased  to  say,  when  Andreas  as 
'  camp-sentinel  demanded  the  pass-word,  ''Schweig'  Himd  10 
'  (Peace,  hound)  !  "  before  any  of  his  staff-adjutants  could 
'  answer.  '^Das  iienn'  ich  mir  cinen  Konig^  There  is  what 
'  I  call  a  King,"  would  Andreas  exclaim  ;  "  but  the 
'  smoke  of  Kunersdorf  was  still  smarting  his  eyes." 

'  Gretchen,  the  housewife,  won  like  Desdemona  by  the  15 
'  deeds  rather  than  the  looks  of  her  now  veteran  Othello, 
'  lived  not  in  altogether  military  subordination  ;  for,  as 
'  Andreas  said,  "  the  womankind  will  not  drill  {itfer  katm 
^  die  Wciberchen  dressirenl^-y  nevertheless   she    at    heart 
'  loved  him  both  for  valour  and  wisdom ;  to  her  a  Prus-  20 
'  sian  grenadier  Sergeant  and  Regiment's  Schoolmaster 
'  was  little  other  than  a  Cicero  and  Cid :   what  you  see, 
'  yet  cannot  see  over,  is  as  good  as  infinite.     Nay,  was 
'  not  Andreas  in   very   deed   a   man   of  order,   courage, 
'  downrightness  {Gerad/ieit)\  that  understood  Biisching's  25 
'  Geography,  had  been  in  the  victory  of  Rossbach,  and 
'  left  for  dead  in  the  camisade  of  Hochkirch  ?     The  good 
'  Gretchen,  for  all  her  fretting,   watched   over  him  and 
'  hovered  around  him,  as  only  a  true  housemother  can : 
'  assiduously  she  cooked  and  sewed  and  scoured  for  him;  30 
'  so  that  not  only  his  old  regimental  sword  and  grenadier- 
'  cap,  but  the  whole  habitation  and  environment,  where 
'on  pegs  of  honour  they  hung,  looked  ever  trim  and  gay: 
'  a  roomy  painted  Cottage,  embowered  in  fruit-trees  and 


74 


SARTOR   RESARTUS, 


forest-trees,  evergreens  and  honeysuckles ;  rising  many- 
coloured  from  amid  shaven  grass-plots,  flowers  strug- 
gling-in  through  the  very  windows ;  under  its  long  pro- 
jecting eaves  nothing  but  garden-tools  in  methodic  piles 
(to  screen  them  from  rain),  and  seats  where,  especially 
on  summer  nights,  a  King  might  have  wished  to  sit  and 
smoke,  and  call  it  his.  Such  a  Batiergtit  (Copyhold) 
had  Gretchen  given  her  veteran  ;  whose  sinewy  arms, 
and  long-disused  gardening  talent,  had  made  it  what 
you  saw. 

'  Into  this  umbrageous  Man's-nest,  one  meek  yellow 
evening  or  dusk,  when  the  Sun,  hidden  indeed  from  ter- 
restrial Entepfuhl,  did  nevertheless  journey  visible  and 
radiant  along  the  celestial  Balance  (Libra),  it  was  that 
a  Stranger  of  reverend  aspect  entered ;  and,  with  grave 
salutation,  stood  before  the  two  rather  astonished  house- 
mates. He  was  close-muffled  in  a  wide  mantle  ;  which 
without  farther  parley  unfolding,  he  deposited  there- 
from what  seemed  some  Basket,  overhung  with  green 
Persian  silk  ;  saying  only :  Ihr  lieben  Leute,  hier  bringe 
eifi  unschdtzbares  Verleihefi ;  nehmt  es  in  aller  Acht,  sorg- 
'fdltigst  beniitzt  es:  7?iit  hohefn  Lohji,  oder  wohl  mit  schweren 
Zi?tsen,  wird's  einst  zuriickgefordert.  "Good  Christian 
people,  here  lies  for  you  an  invaluable  Loan  ;  take  all 
heed  thereof,  in  all  carefulness  employ  it :  with  high 
recompense,  or  else  with  heavy  penalty,  will  it  one  day 
be  required  back."  Uttering  which  singular  words,  in 
a  clear,  bell-like,  forever  memorable  tone,  the  Stranger 
gracefully  withdrew ;  and  before  Andreas  or  his  wife, 
gazing  in  expectant  wonder,  had  time  to  fashion  either 
question  or  answer,  was  clean  gone.  Neither  out  of 
doors  could  aught  of  him  be  seen  or  heard;  he  had 
vanished  in  the  thickets,  in  the  dusk ;  the  Orchard-gate 
stood  quietly  closed:  the  Stranger  was  gone  once  and 


GENESIS. 


75 


always.  So  sudden  had  the  whole  transaction  been,  in 
the  autumn  stillness  and  twilight,  so  gentle,  noiseless, 
that  the  Futterals  could  have  fancied  it  all  a  trick  of 
Imagination,  or  some  visit  from  an  authentic  Spirit. 
Only  that  the  green-silk  Basket,  such  as  neither  Imagi-  5 
nation  nor  authentic  Spirits  are  wont  to  carry,  still 
stood  visible  and  tangible  on  their  little  parlour-table. 
Towards  this  the  astonished  couple,  now  with  lit  candle, 
hastily  turned  their  attention.  Lifting  the  green  veil,  to 
see  what  invaluable  it  hid,  they  descried  there  amid  10 
down  and  rich  white  wrappages,  no  Pitt  Diamond  or 
Hapsburg  Regalia,  but  in  the  softest  sleep,  a  little  red- 
coloured  Infant !  Beside  it,  lay  a  roll  of  gold  Friedrichs 
the  exact  amount  of  which  was  never  publicly  known ; 
also  a  Taufschein  (baptismal  certificate),  wherein  unfort-  15 
unately  nothing  but  the  Name  was  decipherable ;  other 
documents  or  indication  none  whatever. 

'  To  wonder  and  conjecture  was  unavailing,  then  and 
always  thenceforth.  Nowhere  in  Entepfuhl,  on  the 
morrow  or  next  day,  did  tidings  transpire  of  any  such  20 
figure  as  the  Stranger  ;  nor  could  the  Traveller,  who  had 
passed  through  the  neighbouring  Town  in  coach-and- 
four,  be  connected  with  this  Apparition,  except  in  the 
way  of  gratuitous  surmise.  Meanwhile,  for  Andreas 
and  his  wife,  the  grand  practical  problem  was  :  What  to  25 
do  with  this  little  sleeping  red-coloured  Infant  1  Amid 
amazements  and  curiosities,  which  had  to  die  away  with- 
out external  satisfying,  they  resolved,  as  in  such  circum- 
stances charitable  prudent  people  needs  must,  on  nurs- 
ing it,  though  with  spoon-meat,  into  whiteness,  and  if  30 
possible,  into  manhood.  The  Heavens  smiled  on  their 
endeavour  :  thus  has  that  same  mysterious  Individual 
ever  since  had  a  status  for  himself  in  this  visible  Uni- 
verse, some  modicum  of  victual   and  lodging  and  par- 


7 6  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  ade-ground ;    and  now   expanded  in  bulk,  faculty,  and 
'  knowledge   of  good  and  evil,  he,  as  Herr   Diogenes 
'  Teufelsdrockh,  professes  or  is  ready  to  profess,  per- 
'  haps  not  altogether  without  effect,  in  the  new  University 
5  '  of  Weissnichtwo,  the  new  Science  of  Things  in  General.' 
Our  Philosopher  declares  here,  as  indeed  we  should 
think  he  well  might,  that  these  facts,  first  communicated, 
by  the  good  Gretchen  Futteral,  in  his  twelfth  year,  '  pro- 
duced on  the  boyish  heart  and  fancy  a  quite  indelible 
impression.      Who    this  reverend  Personage,'  he  says, 
that  glided  into  the  Orchard  Cottage  when  the  Sun  was 
in   Libra,    and   then,  as    on   spirit's    wings,  glided    out 
again,  might  be  ?     An  inexpressible  desire,  full  of  love 
and  of  sadness,  has  often  since  struggled  within  me  to 
15  '  shape  an  answer.     Ever,  in  my  distresses  and  my  loneli- 
ness, has  Fantasy  turned,  full  of  longing  {sehnsuchtsvoU^, 
to  that  unknown  Father,  who  perhaps  far  from  me,  per- 
haps near,  either  way  invisible,  might  have  taken  me  to 
his  paternal  bosom,  there  to  lie  screened  from  many  a 
woe.      Thou  beloved  Father,  dost  thou  still,  shut  out 
from   me   only  by  thin  penetrable   curtains   of  earthly 
Space,  wend  to  and  fro  among  the  crowd  of  the  living? 
Or  art  thou  hidden  by  those  far  thicker  curtains  of  the 
Everlasting  Night,   or    rather    of  the   Everlasting  Day, 
25    through  which    my  mortal   eye  and   outstretched  arms 
need  not  strive  to  reach  ?     Alas  !   I  know  not,  and  in 
vain  vex  myself   to  know.       More    than    once,   heart- 
deluded,  have  I  taken  for  thee  this  and  the  other  noble- 
looking  Stranger  ;  and  approached   him  wistfully,  with 
30  '  infinite  regard  ;  but  he  too  had  to  repel  me,  he  too  was 
not  thou. 
'And  yet,  O  Man  born  of  Woman,'  cries' the  Autobiog- 
rapher,  with  one  of  his  sudden  whirls,  '  wherein  is  my 
'  case  peculiar  ?     Hadst  thou,  any  more  than  I,  a  Father 


GEiVESIS. 


77 


v^hom  thou  knowest  ?     The  Andreas  and  Gretchen,  or 
the  Adam  and  Eve,  who  led  thee  into  Life,  and  for  a 
time  suckled  and  pap-fed  thee  there,  whom  thou  namest 
Father    and   Mother  ;    these  were,   like  mine,   but    thy^    ■ 
nursing-father  and  nursing-mother  :  thy  true  Beginning  '■  5 
and  Father  is  in  Heaven,  whom  with   the    bodily  eye 
thou  shalt  never  behold,  but  only  with  the  spiritual.' 
'  The  little  green  veil,'  adds  he,  among  much  similar 
moralising,    and    embroiled    discoursing,    '  I    yet    keep ; 
'  still  more  inseparably  the  Name,  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh.  10 
'  From  the  veil  can  nothing  be  inferred  :  a  piece  of  now 
'  quite  faded  Persian  silk,  like  thousands  of  others.     On 
'  the  name  I  have  many  times  meditated  and  conjectured  ; 
'  but  neither  in  this  lay  there  any  clue.     That  it  w^as  my 
'  unknown  Father's  name  I  must  hesitate  to  believe.     To  15 
'no  purpose  have  I  searched  through  all  the  Herald's 
'  Books,  in  and  without  the  German  Empire,  and  through 
'  all  manner  of  Subscriber-Lists  {FrdnHvte?'anten),  Militia- 
*  Rolls,  and  other  Name-catalogues  ;  extraordinary  names 
'  as  we  have  in  Germany,  the  name  Teufelsdrockh,  except  20 
'  as  appended  to  my  own  person,  nowhere  occurs.     Again 
'  what  may  the  unchristian  rather  than  Christian  "  Diog- 
'  enes  "  mean  ?     Did  that  reverend  Basket-bearer  intend 
'  by  such  designation,  to  shadow  forth  my  future  destiny, 
'  or  his  own  present  malign  humour?     Perhaps  the  latter,  25 
'perhaps  both.       Thou  ill-starred   Parent,  who    like   an 
'  Ostrich  hadst  to   leave  thy  ill-starred   offspring  to   be 
'  hatched  into  self-support  by  the  mere  sky-influences  of 
'  Chance,  can  thy  pilgrimage  have  been  a  smooth  one  ? 
'  Beset  by  Misfortune  thou  doubtless  hast  been ;  or  in-  30 
'  deed  by  the  worst  figure  of  Misfortune,  by  Misconduct. 
'  Often  have  I  fanced  how,  in  thy  hard  life-battle,  thou 
'  wert  shot  at  and  slung  at,  wounded,  hand-fettered,  ham- 
'  strung,  browbeaten  and  bedevilled,  by  the  Time-Spirit 


7 8  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

{Zeitgeist)  in  thyself  and  others,  till  the  good  soul  first 
given  thee  was  seared  into  grim  rage  ;  and  thou  hadst 
nothing  for  it  but  to  leave  in  me  an  indignant  appeal 
to  the  Future,  and  living  speaking  Protest  against  the 
Devil,  as  that  same  Spirit  not  of  the  Time  only,  but  of 
Time  itself,  is  well  named  !  Which  Appeal  and  Pro- 
test, may  I  now  modestly  add,  was  not  perhaps  quite 
lost  in  air. 

'  For  indeed  as  Walter  Shandy  often  insisted,  there  is 
much,  nay  almost  all,  in  Names.  The  Name  is  the  ear- 
liest garment  you  wrap  round  the  earth-visiting  Me  ;  to 
which  it  thenceforth  cleaves,  more  tenaciously  (for  there 
are  Names  that  have  lasted  nigh  thirty  centuries)  than 
the  very  skin.  And  now  from  without,  what  mystic  in- 
fluences does  it  not  send  inwards,  even  to  the  centre ; 
especially  in  those  plastic  first-times,  when  the  whole 
soul  is  yet  infantine,  soft,  and  the  invisible  seed-grain 
will  grow  to  be  an  all  overshadowing  tree  !  Names  t 
Could  I  unfold  the  influence  of  Names,  which  are  the 
most  important  of  all  Clothings,  I  were  a  second  greater 
Trismegistus.  Not  only  all  common  Speech,  but  Sci- 
ence, Poetry  itself  is  no  other,  if  thou  consider  it, 
than  a  right  Naming.  Adam's  first  task  was  giving 
names  to  natural  Appearances  :  what  is  ours  still  but  a 
continuation  of  the  same ;  be  the  Appearances  exotic- 
vegetable,  organic,  mechanic,  stars,  or  starry  movements 
(as  in  Science),  or  (as  in  Poetry)  passions,  virtues,  ca- 
lamities, God-attributes,  Gods.'' — In  a  very  plain  sense 
the  Proverb  says.  Call  one  a  thief ^  and  he  will  steal;  in 
an  almost  similar  sense,  may  we  not  perhaps  say.  Call 
one  Diogenes  Tenfelsdrockh^  and  he  will  open  the  Philoso- 
phy of  Clothes  V 

'  Meanwhile  the  incipient  Diogenes,  like  others,  all 
ignorant  of  his  Why,  his  How  or  Whereabout,  was  open- 


GEA^ESIS.  79 

'  ing  his  eyes  to  the  kind  Light ;  sprawling-out  his  ten 
'  fingers  and  toes ;  listening,  tasting,  feeling ;  in  a  word, 
*by  all  his  Five  Senses,  still  more  by  his  sixth  Sense  of 
'  Hunger,  and  a  whole  infinitude  of  inward,  spiritual,  half- 
'  awakened  Senses,  endeavouring  daily  to  acquire  for  5 
'  himself  some  knowledge  of  this  strange  Universe  where 
'he  had  arrived,  be  his  task  therein  what  it  might.  Infi- 
'  nite  was  his  progress ;  thus  in  some  fifteen  months,  he 
'could  perform  the  miracle  of — Speech!  To  breed  a 
'fresh  Soul,  is  it  not  like  brooding  a  fresh  (celestial)  10 
'  Egg ;  wherein  as  yet  all  is  formless,  powerless ;  yet  by 
'  degrees  organic  elements  and  fibres  shoot  through  the 
'  watery  albumen ;    and   out   of  vague  Sensation,  grows 

*  Thought,  grow  Fantasy  and  Force,  and  we  have  Phil- 
'osophies.  Dynasties,  nay  Poetries  and  Religions!  15 

'  Young  Diogenes,  or  rather  young  Gneschen,  for  by 
'  such  diminutive  had  they  in  their  fondness  named  him, 
'  travelled  forward  to  those  high  consummations,  by  quick 
'  yet  easy  stages.  The  Futterals,  to  avoid  vain  talk,  and 
'  moreover  keep  the  roll  of  gold  Friedrichs  safe,  gave-  20 
'  out  that  he  was  a  grand-nephew;  the  orphan  of  some 
'  sister's  daughter,  suddenly  deceased,  in  Andreas's  dis- 
'  tant  Prussian  birth-land ;  of  whom,  as  of  her  indigent 

*  sorrowing  widower,  little   enough  was  known  at  Ente- 

'  pfuhl.     Heedless  of  all  which,  the  Nurseling  took  to  his  25 
'  spoon-meat,  and  throve.     I  have  heard  him  noted  as  a 
'  still  infant,  that  kept  his  mind  much  to  himself ;  above 
'  all,  that  seldom  or  never  cried.     He  already  felt  that 
'  time  was  precious  ;  that  he  had  other  work  cut-out  for   , 
'  him  than  whimpering.'  3° 

Such,  after  utmost  painful  search  and  collation  among 
these  miscellaneous  Paper-masses,  is  all  the  notice  we 
can    gather  of   Herr  Teufelsdrockh's   genealogy.     More 


So  S A 7k' TOR   RESARTUS. 

imperfect,  more  enigmatic  it  can  seem  to  few  readers 
than  to  us.  The  Professor,  in  whom  truly  we  more  and 
more  discern  a  certain  satirical  turn,  and  deep  under-cur- 
rents  of  roguish  whim,  for  the  present  stands  pledged  in 

5  honour,  so  we  will  not  doubt  him  :  but  seems  it  not  con- 
ceivable that,  by  the  '  good  Gretchen  Futteral,'  or  some 
other  perhaps  interested  party,  he  has  himself  been  de- 
ceived ?  Should  these  sheets,  translated  or  not,  ever 
reach  the  Entepfuhl  Circulating-Library,  some  cultivated 

10  native  of  that  district  might  feel  called  to  afford  explana- 
tion. Nay,  since  Books,  like  invisible  scouts,  permeate 
the  whole  habitable  globe,  and  Timbuctoo  itself  is  not 
safe  from  British  Literature,  may  not  some  Copy  find  out 
even  the  mysterious   basket-bearing  stranger,   who  in  a 

15  state  of  extreme  senility  perhaps  still  exists;  and  gently 
force  even  him  to  disclose  himself  ;  to  claim  openly  a  son, 
in  whom  any  father  may  feel  pride  ? 


CHAPTER    IL 


IDYLLIC. 


'  Happy  season  of  Childhood  ! '  exclaims  Teufelsdrockh : 
Kind  Nature,  that  art  to  all  a  bountiful  mother;  that 
visitest  the  poor  man's  hut  with  auroral  radiance ;  and 
for  thy  Nurseling  hast  provided  a  soft  swathing  of  Love 
and  infinite  Hope,  wherein  he  waxes  and  slumbers, 
danced-round  (iwigaiikelt)  by  sweetest  Dreams  !  If  the 
paternal  Cottage  still  shuts  us  in,  its  roof  still  screens 
us ;  with  a  Father  we  have  as  yet  a  prophet,  priest  and 
king,  and  Obedience  that  makes  us  free.  The  young 
spirit  has  awakened  out  of  Eternity,  and  knows  not  what 


IDYLLIC.  8 1 

we   mean    by  Time ;    as   yet  Time   is  no  fast-hurrying 
stream,  but  a  sportful  sunlit  ocean  ;  years  to  the  child 
are  as  ages  :  ah  !  the  secret  of  Vicissitude,  of  that  slower 
or  quicker  decay  and  ceaseless  down-rushing  of  the  uni- 
versal World-fabric,  from  the  granite  mountain  to  the    5 
man  or  day-moth,  is  yet  unknown  ;  and  in  a  motionless 
Universe,  we  taste,  what  afterwards  in  this  quick-whirl- 
ing  Universe   is   forever  denied  us,  the  balm  of  Rest. 
Sleep  on,  thou  fair  Child,  for  thy  long  rough  journey  is  at 
hand  !     A  little  while,  and  thou  too  shalt  sleep  no  more,  10 
but  thy  very  dreams  shall  be  mimic  battles ;  thou  too, 
with  old  Arnauld,  wilt  have  to  say  in  stern  patience  : 
"Rest?     Rest?     Shall  I  not  have  all  Eternity  to  rest 
in  ?  "     Celestial  Nepenthe  !  though  a  Pyrrhus  conquer 
empires,  and  an  Alexander  sack  the  world,  he  finds  thee  15 
not ;  and  thou  hast  once  fallen  gently,  of  thy  own  ac- 
cord,  on  the   eyelids,   on   the   heart  of  every  mother's 
child.     For  as  yet,  sleep  and  waking  are  one  :  the  fair 
Life-garden  rustles  infinite  around,  and  everywhere  are 
dewy  fragrance,  and  the  budding  of  Hope  ;  which  bud-  20 
ding,  if  in  youth,  too  frostnipt,  it  grow  to  flowers,  will 
in  manhood  yield  no  fruit,  but  a  prickly,  bitter-rinded 
stone-fruit,  of  which  the  fewest  can  find  the  kernel.' 
In  such  rose-coloured  light  does  our  Professor,  as  Poets 
are   wont,    look   back  on   his   childhood;    the   historical  25 
details   of  which   (to  say  nothing   of  much  other  vague 
oratorical  matter)  he  accordingly  dwells  on,  with  an  al- 
most  wearisome    minuteness.      We    hear    of    Entepfuhl 
standing   'in    trustful    derangement'   among   the  woody 
slopes  ;  the  paternal  Orchard  flanking  it  as  extreme  out-  30 
post  from  below  ;  the  little  Kuhbach  gushing  kindly  by, 
among   beech-rows,    through   river    after   river,    into    the 
Donau,   into   the    Black   Sea,   into   the   Atmosphere   and 
Universe  ;   and  how  '  the  brave  old   Linden,'  stretching 


82  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

like  a  parasol  of  twenty  ells  in  radius,  overtopping  all 
other  rows  and  clumps,  towered-up  from  the  central  Agora 
and  Campus  Martins  of  the  Village,  like  its  Sacred  Tree ; 
and  how  the  old  men  sat  talking  under  its  shadow 
5  (Gneschen  often  greedily  listening),  and  the  wearied 
labourers  reclined,  and  the  unwearied  children  sported, 
and  the  young  men  and  maidens  often  danced  to  flute- 
music.  '  Glorious  summer  twilights,'  cries  Teufelsdrockh, 
'  when  the  Sun  like  a  proud  Conqueror  and  Imperial 
10  '  Taskmaster  turned  his  back,  with  his  gold-purple  em- 
'  blazonry,  and  all  his  fireclad  body-guard  (of  Prismatic 
'  Colours) ;  and  the  tired  brickmakers  of  this  clay  Earth 
'  might  steal  a  little  frolic,  and  those  few  meek  Stars 
'  would  not  tell  of  them  ! ' 
15  Then  we  have  long  details  of  the  Wemlesefi  (Vintage) 
the  Harvest-Home,  Christmas,  and  so  forth ;  with  a 
whole  cycle  of  the  Entepfuhl  Children's-games,  differing 
apparently  by  mere  superficial  shades  from  those  of  other 
countries.  Concerning  all  which,  we  shall  here,  for  ob- 
20  vious  reasons,  say  nothing.  What  cares  the  world  for 
our  as  yet  miniature  Philosopher's  achievements  under 
that  '  brave  old  Linden  '  ?  Or  even  where  is  the  use  of 
such  practical  reflections  as  the  following }  '  In  all  the 
sports  of  Children,  were  it  only  in  their  wanton  break- 
ages and  defacements,  you  shall  discern  a  creative  in- 
stinct {schaffe7ide7i  Trieb) :  the  Mankin  feels  that  he  is  a 
born  Man,  that  his  vocation  is  to  work.  The  choicest 
present  you  can  make  him  is  a  Tool ;  be  it  knife  or  pen- 
gun,  for  construction  or  for  destruction  ;  either  way  it 
30  "  is  for  Work,  for  Change.  In  gregarious  sports  of  skill 
or  strength,  the  Boy  trains  himself  to  Cooperation,  for 
war  or  peace,  as  governor  or  governed  :  the  little  Maid 
again,  provident  of  her  domestic  destiny,  takes  with 
preference  to  Dolls.' 


IDYLLIC. 


83 


Perhaps,  however,  we  may  give  this  anecdote,  consid- 
ering who  it  is  that  relates  it  :  '  My  first  short-clothes  were 
'  of  yellow  serge  ;  or  rather,  I  should  say,  my  first  short- 

*  cloth,  for  the  vesture  was  one  and  indivisible,  reaching 

*  from   neck  to  ankle,  a  mere  body  with  four  limbs  :  of    5 
'  which  fashion  how  little  could  I  then  divine  the  archi- 

'  tectural,  how  much  less  the  moral  significance  ! ' 

More  graceful  is  the  following  little  picture  :  '  On  fine 
'  evenings   I  was  wont  to  carry-forth  my  supper  (bread- 
'  crumb  boiled  in  milk),  and  eat  it  out-of-doors.     On  the  10 
'  coping  of   the   Orchard-wall,    which  I   could  reach  by 

*  climbing,  or  still  more  easily  if  Father  Andreas  would 
'  set-up  the  pruning-ladder,  my  porringer  was  placed  : 
'  there,   many  a  sunset,   have   I,  looking  at  the  distant 

'  western  Mountains,  consumed,  not  without  relish,  my  15 
'  evening  meal.  Those  hues  of  gold  and  azure,  that 
'  hush  of  World's  expectation  as  Day  died,  were  still  a 
'  Hebrew  Speech  for  me  ;  nevertheless,  I  was  looking 
'  at  the  fair  illuminated  Letters,  and  had  an  eye  for  their 
'  gilding.'  20 

With  '  the  little  one's  friendship  for  cattle  and  poultry,' 

we  shall  not  much  intermeddle.     It  may  be  that  hereby 

he  acquired  a  '  certain  deeper  sympathy  with  animated 

Nature';  but  when,  we  would  ask,  saw  any  man,  in   a 

collection  of  biographical  Documents,  such  a  piece  as  25 

this  :  '  Impressive  enough  {bedeutungsvoll)  was  it  to  hear, 

in  early  morning,  the  Swineherd's  horn  ;  and  know  that 

so  many  hungry  happy  quadrupeds  were,  on  all  sides, 

starting  in  hot  haste  to  join  him,  for  breakfast  on  the 

Heath.      Or  to  see  them,  at  eventide,  all  marching-in  3° 

again,  with  short  squeak,  almost  in  military  order  ;  and 

each,  topographically  correct,  trotting-off  in  succession 

to  the  right  or  left,  through  its  own  lane,  to  its  own 

dwelling  ;  till  old   Kunz,  at  the  Village-head,  now  left 


84  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

*  alone,  blew  his  last  blast,  and  retired  for  the  night.  We 
'  are  wont  to  love  the  Hog  chiefly  in  the  form  of  Ham  ; 
'  yet  did  not  these  bristly  thick-skinned  beings  here  mani- 
'  fest  intelligence,  perhaps  humour  of  character  ;  at  any 

5  *  rate,  a  touching,  trustful  submissiveness  to  man,  —  who 

'  were   he   but   a   Swineherd,  in   darned  gabardine,   and 

'  leather  breeches  more  resembling  slate  or  discoloured- 

'  tin  breeches,  is  still  the  Hierarch  of  this  lower  world  ? ' 

It  is  maintained,  by  Helvetius  and  his  set,  that  an  in- 

lo  fant  of  genius  is  quite  the  same  as  any  other  infant,  only 
that  certain  surprisingly  favourable  influences  accompany 
him  through  life,  especially  through  childhood,  and  ex- 
pand him,  while  others  lie  closefolded  and  continue 
dunces.     Herein,  say  they,  consists  the- whole  difference 

15  between  an  inspired  Prophet  and  a  double-barrelled 
Game-preserver  :  the  inner  man  of  the  one  has  been  fos- 
tered into  generous  development ;  that  of  the  other, 
crushed-down  perhaps  by  vigour  of  animal  digestion,  and 
the  like,  has  exuded  and  evaporated,  or  at  best  sleeps 

20  now  irresuscitably  stagnant  at  the  bottom  of  his  stomach. 
'With  which  opinion,'  cries  Teufelsdrockh, '  I  should  as 
'  soon  agree  as  with  this  other,  that  an  acorn  might,  by 

*  favourable  or  unfavourable  influences  of  soil  and  climate, 
'  be  nursed  into  a  cabbage,  or  the  cabbage-seed  into  an 

25  '  oak. 

*  Nevertheless,'  continues  he,  '  I  too  acknowledge  the 
'  ail-but  omnipotence  of  early  culture  and  nurture  :  hereby 

*  we  have  either  a  doddered  dwarf  bush,  or  a  high-tower- 
'  ing,  wide-shadowing  tree  ;  either  a  sick  yellow  cabbage, 

50  '  or  an  edible  luxuriant  green  one.  Of  a  truth,  it  is  the 
'  duty  of  all  men,  especially  of  all  philosophers,  to  note- 
'  down  with  accuracy  the  characteristic  circumstances  of 
'  their  Education,  what  furthered,  what  hindered,  what  in 
'  any  way  modified  it :  to  which  duty,  nowadays  so  press- 


IDYLLIC. 


8S 


'  ing  for  many  a    German  Autobiographer,    I  also   zeal- 
'ously  address  myself.' — Thou  rogue!     Is  it  by  short- 
clothes   of  yellow  serge,    and   swineherd  horns,  that  an 
infant  of  genius  is  educated  ?     And  yet,  as  usual,  it  ever 
remains  doubtful  whether  he  is  laughing  in  his  sleeve  at    5 
these   Autobiographical    times  of  ours,  or  writing   from 
the  abundance  of  his  own  fond  ineptitude.     P'or  he  con- 
tinues :  '  If  among  the  ever-streaming  currents  of  Sights, 
Hearings,  Feelings  for  Pain  or  Pleasure,  whereby,  as  in 
a  Magic  Hall,  young  Gneschen  went  about  environed,  I  10 
might  venture  to  select  and  specify,  perhaps  these  fol- 
lowing were  also  of  the  number  : 

'  Doubtless,  as  childish  sports  call  forth  Intellect,  Ac- 
tivity, so  the  young  creature's  Imagination  was  stirred 
up,  and  a  Historical  tendency  given  him  by  the  narra-  15 
tive   habits   of  Father   Andreas  ;  who,  with   his  battle- 
reminiscences,  and  grey  austere  yet  hearty  patriarchal 
aspect,    could    not    but    appear    another    Ulysses    and 
"much-enduring  Man."     Eagerly  I  hung  upon  his  tales, 
when  listening  neighbours  enlivened  the  hearth  :  from  20 
these  perils  and  these  travels,  wild  and  far  almost  as 
Hades  itself,  a  dim  world  of  Adventure  expanded  itself 
within   me.       Incalculable    also   was   the    knowledge    I 
acquired  in  standing  by  the  Old  Men  under  the  Linden- 
tree  :  the  whole  of  Immensity  was  yet  new  to  me ;  and  25 
had  not  these  reverend  seniors,  talkative  enough,  been 
employed  in  partial  surveys  thereof  for  nigh  fourscore 
years  ?     With  amazement  I  began  to  discover  that  En- 
tepfuhl  stood  in  the  middle  of  a  Country,  of  a  World ; 
that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  History,  as  Biography ;  30 
to  which   I  also,  one  day,  by  hand  and  tongue,  might 
contribute. 

'  In  a  like  sense  worked  the  Postwagen  (Stage-Coach), 
which,  slow-rolling  under  its  mountains  of  men  and  lug- 


86  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

gage,  wended  through  our  Village  :  northwards,  truly,  in 
the  dead  of  night ;  yet  southwards  visibly  at  eventide. 
Not  till  my  eighth  year,  did  I  reflect  that  this  Postwagen 
could  be  other  than  some  terrestrial  Moon,  rising  and 
setting  by  mere  Law  of  Nature,  like  the  heavenly  one  ; 
that  it  came  on  made  highways,  from  far  cities  towards 
far  cities ;  weaving  them  like  a  monstrous  shuttle  into 
closer  and  closer  union.  It  was  then  that,  indepen- 
dently of  Schiller's  Wilhebji  Tell,  I  made  this  not  quite 
insignificant  reflection  (so  true  also  in  spiritual  things)  : 
A?iy  road,  this  simple  Entepfuhl  road,  will  lead  you  to  the 
e7id  of  the  World  I 

'Why  mention  our  Swallows,  which,  out  of  far  Africa 
as  I  learned,  threading  their  way  over  seas  and  moun- 
tains, corporate  cities  and  belligerent  nations,  yearly 
found  themselves,  with  the  month  of  May,  snug-lodged 
in  our  Cottage  Lobby?  The  hospitable  Father  (for  clean- 
liness' sake)  had  fixed  a  little  bracket  plumb  under 
their  nest :  there  they  built,  and  caught  flies,  and  twit- 
tered, and  bred  ;  and  all,  I  chiefly,  from  the  heart  loved 
them.  Bright,  nimble  creatures,  who  taught  you  the 
mason-craft ;  nay,  stranger  still,  gave  you  a  masonic 
incorporation,  almost  social  police?  For  if,  by  ill 
chance,  and  when  time  pressed,  your  House  fell,  have  I 
not  seen  five  neighbourly  Helpers  appear  next  day ;  and 
swashing  to  and  fro,  with  animated,  loud,  long-drawn 
chirpings,  and  activity  almost  super-hirundine,  complete 
it  again  before  nightfall? 

*  But  undoubtedly  the  grand  summary  of  Entepfuhl 
child's  culture,  where  as  in  a  funnel  its  manifold  influ- 
ences were  concentrated  and  simultaneously  poured- 
down  on  us,  was  the  annual  Cattle-fair.  Here,  assem- 
bling from  all  the  four  winds,  came  the  elements  of  an 
unspeakable    hurly-burly.      Nutbrown    maids    and   nut- 


IDYLLIC.  87 

'  brown   men,  all  clear-washed,  loud-laughing,  bedizened  - 
'  and   beribanded ;  wjio   came   for   dancing,  for  treating, 
'  and    if   possible,    for    happiness.     Topbooted  Graziers 
'from  the  North;   Swiss  Brokers,   Italian   Drovers,  also 
'  topbooted,  from  the  South  ;  these  with  their  subalterns    5 
'  in  leather  jerkins,  leather  skull-caps,  and  long  oxgoads  ; 

*  shouting  in  half-articulate  speech,  amid  the  inarticulate 

*  barking  and  bellowing.     Apart  stood  Potters  from  far 

*  Saxony,  with    their   crockery    in    fair    rows ;    Niirnberg 

'  Pedlars,  in  booths  that  to  me  seemed  richer  than  Ormuz  10 
'  bazaars ;  Showmen  from  the  Lago  Maggiore ;  detach- 
'  ments  of  the  Wie?ier  Schiih  (Offscourings  of  Vienna) 
'  vociferously  superintending  games  of  chance.  Ballad- 
'  singers  brayed,  Auctioneers  grew  hoarse  ;  cheap  New 
'  Wine  (Jieuriger)  flowed  like  water,  still  worse  confound-  1 5 
'  ing  the  confusion  ;  and  high  over  all,  vaulted,  in  ground- 
'  and-lofty  tumbling,  a  particoloured  Merry- Andrew,  like 
'  the  genius  of  the  place  and  of  Life  itself.' 

'  Thus  encircled  by  the  mystery  of  Existence  ;  under 
the  deep  heavenly  Firmament ;   waited-on  by  the  four  20 
golden  Seasons  with  their  vicissitudes  of  contribution, 
for  even  grim  Winter  brought  its  skating-matches  and 
shooting-matches,  its  snow-storms  and  Christmas-carols, 
—  did  the  Child  sit  and  learn.     These  things  were  the 
Alphabet,  whereby  in  after-time  he  was  to  syllable  and  25 
partly  read  the  grand  Volume  of  the  World  :  what   mat- 
ters it  whether  such  Alphabet  be  in  large  gilt  letters  or 
in  small  ungilt  ones,  so  you   have  an  eye  to  read   W. 
For  Gneschen,  eager  to  learn,  the  very  act  of  looking 
thereon  was  a  blessedness  that  gilded  all :  his  existence  3° 
was  a  bright,  soft  element  of  Joy  ;  out  of  which,  as  in 
Prospero's   Island,  wonder   after   wonder   bodied   itself 
forth,  to  teach  by  charming. 


U 


88  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  Nevertheless,  I  were  but  a  vain  dreamer  to  say,  that 
even  then  my  felicity  was  perfect.  I  had,  once  for  all, 
come  down  from  Heaven  into  the  Earth,  Among  the 
rainbow  colours  that  glowed  on  my  horizon,  lay  even  in 
childhood  a  dark  ring  of  Care,  as  yet  no  thicker  than  a 
thread,  and  often  quite  overshone ;  yet  always  it  reap- 
peared, nay  ever  waxing  broader  and  broader;  till  in 
after-years  it  almost  over-shadowed  my  whole  canopy, 
and  threatened  to  engulf  me  in  final  night.  It  was 
the  ring  of  Necessity,  whereby  we  are  all  begirt ;  happy 
he  for  whom  a  kind  heavenly  Sun  brightens  it  into  a 
ring  of  Duty,  and  plays  round  it  with  beautiful  pris- 
matic diffractions  ;  yet  ever,  as  basis  and  as  bourne  for 
our  whole  being,  it  is  there. 

'  For  the  first  few  years  of  our  terrestrial  Apprentice- 
ship, we  have  not  much  work  to  do ;  but,  boarded  and 
lodged  gratis,  are  set  down  mostly  to  look  about  us  over 
the  workshop,  and  see  others  work,  till  we  have  under- 
stood the  tools  a  little,  and  can  handle  this  and  that. 
If  good  Passivity  alone,  and  not  good  Passivity  and 
good  Activity  together,  were  the  thing  wanted,  then  was 
my  early  position  favourable  beyond  the  most.  In  all 
that  respects  openness  of  Sense,  affectionate  Temper, 
ingenuous  Curiosity,  and  the  fostering  of  these,  what 
more  could  I  have  wished?  On  the  other  side,  how- 
ever, things  went  not  so  well.  My  Active  Power  {That- 
kraft)  was  unfavourably  hemmed-in ;  of  which  misfor- 
tune how  many  traces  yet  abide  with  me  !  In  an  orderly 
house,  where  the  litter  of  children's  sports  is  hateful 
enough,  your  training  is  too  stoical  ;  rather  to  bear  and 
forbear  than  to  make  and  do.  I  was  forbid  much  : 
wishes  in  any  measure  bold  I  had  to  renounce  ;  every- 
where a  strait  bond  of  Obedience  inflexibly  held  me 
down.      Thus  already  Freewill  often   came   in  painful 


IDYLLIC.  89 

collision  with  Necessity  ;  so  that  my  tears  flowed,  and 
at  seasons  the  Child  itself  might  taste  that  root  of  bit- 
terness, wherewith  the  whole  fruitage  of  our  life  is  min- 
gled and  tempered. 

'  In  which  habituation  to  Obedience,  truly,  it  was  be-    5 
yond  measure  safer  to  err  by   excess  than  by  defect. 
Obedience  is  our  universal  duty  and  destiny ;  wherein 
whoso   will   not  bend   must  break :  too  early    and    too 
thoroughly  we  cannot  be  trained  to  know  that  Would, 
in  this  world  of  ours,  is  as  mere  zero  to  Should,  and  for  10 
most   part   as   the  smallest  of  fractions  even  to  Shall. 
Hereby  was  laid  for  me  the  basis  of  worldly  Discretion, 
nay,  of  Morality  itself.     Let  me  not  quarrel  with  my  up- 
bringing !     It  was   rigorous,  too   frugal,  compressively 
secluded,  every  way  unscientific :  yet  in  that  very  strict-  15 
ness  and  domestic  solitude  might  there  not  lie  the  root 
of  deeper  earnestness,  of  the  stem  from  which  all  noble 
fruit  must  grow?     Above  all,  how  unskilful  soever,   it 
was  loving,  it  was  well-meant,  honest ;  whereby  every 
deficiency  was  helped.     My  kind  Mother,  for  as  such  I  20 
must  ever  love  the  good  Gretchen,  did  me  one  altogether 
invaluable  service  :  she  taught  me,  less  indeed  by  word 
than  by  act  and  daily  reverent  look  and  habitude,  her 
own  simple  version  of  the   Christian   Faith.     Andreas 
too  attended  Church ;    yet  more  like  a  parade  duty  for  25 
which  he  in  the  other  world  expected  pay  with  arrears, 
—  as,  I  trust,  he  has  received ;  but  my  Mother,  with  a 
true  woman's  heart,  and  fine  though  uncultivated  sense, 
was  in  the  strictest  acceptation  Religious.     How  inde- 
structibly the  Good  grows,  and  propagates  itself,  even  3° 
among  the  weedy  entanglements  of  Evil !     The  highest 
whom  I  knew  on  Earth  I  here  saw  bowed  down,  with 
awe    unspeakable,   before   a   Higher  in  Heaven  :   such 
things,  especially  in  infancy,  reach  inwards  to  the  very 


90 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


'  core  of  your  being ;  mysteriously  does  a  Holy  of  Holies 
'  build  itself  into  visibility  in  the  mysterious  deeps ;  and 
*  Reverence,  the  divinest  in  man,  springs  forth  undying 
'from    its    mean    envelopment   of   Fear.     Wouldst    thou 

5  *  rather  be  a  peasant's  son  that  knew,  were  it  never  so 
'  rudely,  there  was  a  God  in  Heaven  and  in  Man  ;  or  a 
'  duke's  son  that  only  knew  there  were  two-and-thirty 
'quarters  on  the  family-coach?' 

To  which  last  question  we  must  answer  :   Beware,  O 

lo  Teufelsdrockh,  of  spiritual  pride  ! 


CHAPTER    III. 


PEDAGOGY. 


Hitherto  we  see  young  Gneschen,  in  his  indivisible 
case  of  yellow  serge,  borne  forward  mostly  on  the  arms 
of  kind  Nature  alone ;  seated,  indeed,  and  much  to  his 
mind,  in  the   terrestrial  workshop ;    but  (except  his  soft 

15  hazel  eyes,  which  we  doubt  not  already  gleamed  with  a 
still  intelligence)  called  upon  for  little  voluntary  move- 
ment there.  Hitherto,  accordingly,  his  aspect  is  rather 
generic,  that  of  an  incipient  Philosopher  and  Poet  in  the 
abstract :    perhaps   it   would   puzzle   Herr    Heuschrecke 

20  himself  to  say  wherein  the  Special  Doctrine  of  Clothes 
is  as  yet  foreshadowed  or  betokened.  For  with  Gneschen, 
as  with  others,  the  Man  may  indeed  stand  pictured  in 
the  Boy  (at  least  all  the  pigments  are  there)  ;  yet  only 
some  half  of  the  Man  stands  in  the  Child,  or  young  Boy, 

25  namely,  his  Passive  endowment,  not  his  Active.  The 
more  impatient  are  we  to  discover  what  figure  he  cuts  in 
this  latter  capacity;  how,  when,  to  use  his  own  words, 


PEDAGOGY.  91 

'  he  understands  the  tools  a  little,  and  can  handle  this  or 
that,'  he  will  proceed  to  handle  it. 

Here,  however,  may  be  the  place  to  state  that,  in  much 
of  our  Philosopher's  history,  there  is  something  of  an 
almost  Hindoo  character :  nay,  perhaps  in  that  so  well  5 
fostered  and  everyway  excellent  '  Passivity '  of  his,  which, 
with  no  free  development  of  the  antagonist  Activity,  dis- 
tinguished his  childhood,  we  may  detect  the  rudiments 
of  much  that,  in  after-days,  and  still  in  these  present 
days,  astonishes  the  world.  For  the  shallow-sighted,  10 
Teufelsdrockh  is  oftenest  a  man  without  Activity  of  any 
kind,  a  No-man ;  for  the  deep-sighted,  again,  a  man  with 
Activity  almost  superabundant,  yet  so  spiritual,  close- 
hidden,  enigmatic,  that  no  mortal  can  foresee  its  explo- 
sions, or  even  when  it  has  exploded,  so  much  as  ascertain  15 
its  significance.  A  dangerous,  difficult  temper  for  the 
modern  European ;  above  all,  disadvantageous  in  the 
hero  of  a  Biography !  Now  as  heretofore  it  will  behove 
the  Editor  of  these  pages,  were  it  never  so  unsuccessfully, 
to  do  his  endeavour.  20 

Among  the  earliest  tools  of  any  complicacy  which  a 
man,  especially  a  man  of  letters,  gets  to  handle,  are  his 
Class-books.     On   this  portion  of  his  History,  Teufels- 
drockh looks  down  professedly  as  indifferent.     Reading 
he  'cannot  remember  ever  to  have  learned';  so  perhaps  25 
had  it  by  nature.     He  says  generally  :  '  Of  the  insignifi- 
cant  portion    of   my    Education,    which    depended    on 
Schools,    there    need    almost    no    notice    be    taken.     I 
learned  what  others  learn  ;    and  kept  it  stored-by  in  a 
corner  of  my  head,  seeing  as  yet  no  manner  of  use  in  it.  30 
My  Schoolmaster,    a  downbent,  brokenhearted,  under- 
foot martyr,  as  others  of  that  guild  are,  did  little  for  me, 
except  discover  that  he  could  do  little  :  he,  good  soul, 
pronounced  me  a  genius,  fit  for  the  learned  professions ; 


^2  SARTOK   RESARTUS. 

and  that  I  must  be  sent  to  the  Gymnasium,  and  one  day 
to  the  University.  Meanwhile,  what  printed  thing  so- 
ever I  could  meet  with  I  read.  My  very  copper  pocket- 
money  I  laid-out  on  stall-literature  ;  which,  as  it  accumu- 
lated, I  with  my  own  hands  sewed  into  volumes.  By 
this  means  was  the  young  head  furnished  with  a  consid- 
erable miscellany  of  things  and  shadows  of  things  :  His- 
tory in  authentic  fragments  lay  mingled  with  Fabulous 
chimeras,  wherein  also  was  reality;  and  the  whole  not 
as  dead  stuff,  but  as  living  pabulum,  tolerably  nutritive 
for  a  mind  as  yet  so  peptic' 

That  the  Entepfuhl  Schoolmaster  judged  well,  we  now 
know.  Indeed,  already  in  the  youthful  Gneschen,  with 
all  his  outward  stillness,  there  may  have  been  manifest 
15  an  inward  vivacity  that  promised  much;  symptoms  of  a 
spirit  singularly  open,  thoughtful,  almost  poetical.  Thus, 
to  say  nothing  of  his  Suppers  on  the  Orchard-wall,  and 
other  phenomena  of  that  earUer  period,  have  many  readers 
of  these  pages  stumbled,  in  their  twelfth  year,  on  such 
20  reflections  as  the  following?  'It  struck  me  much,  as  I 
'  sat  by  the  Kuhbach,  one  silent  noontide,  and  watched 
'  it  flowing,  gurgling,  to  think  how  this  same  streamlet 
'  had  flowed  and  gurgled,  through  all  changes  of  weather 
'  and  of  fortune,  from  beyond  the  earliest  date  of  History. 
25  '  Yes,  probably  on  the  morning  when  Joshua  forded 
'  Jordan ;  even  as  at  the  mid-day  when  Caesar,  doubtless 
'  with  difficulty,  swam  the  Nile,  yet  kept  his  Comnwitaries 
'  dry,  —  this  little  Kuhbach,  assiduous  as  Tiber,  Eurotas 
'  or  Siloa,  was  murmuring  on  across  the  wilderness,  as  yet 
30  '  unnamed,  unseen  :  here,  too,  as  in  the  Euphrates  and 
'  the  Ganges,  is  a  vein  or  veinlet  of  the  grand  World- 
*  circulation  of  Waters,  which,  with  its  atmospheric  arte- 
'  ries,  has  lasted  and  lasts  simply  with  the  World.  Thou 
'fool!     Nature  alone   is  antique,  and  the  oldest    art  a 


PEDAGOGY. 


93 


'  mushroom  ;  that  idle  crag  thou  sittest  on  is  six-thousand 
'years  of  age.'  In  which  little  thought,  as  in  a  little 
fountain,  may  there  not  lie  the  beginning  of  those  well- 
nigh  unutterable  meditations  on  the  grandeur  and 
mystery  of  Time,  and  its  relation  to  Eternity,  which  5 
play  such  a  part  in  this  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ? 

Over  his  Gymnasic  and  Academic  years  the  Professor 
by  no  means  lingers  so  lyrical  and  joyful  as  over  his 
childhood.  Green  sunny  tracts  there  are  still ;  but  inter- 
sected by  bitter  rivulets  of  tears,  here  and  there  stagnat-  10 
ing  into  sour  marshes  of  discontent.  '  With  my  first  view 
'  of  the  Hinterschlag  Gymnasium,'  writes  he,  '  my  evil 
'  days  began.  Well  do  I  still  remember  the  red  sunny 
'  Whitsuntide  morning,  when,  trotting  full  of  hope  by  the 
'  side  of  Father  Andreas,  I  entered  the  main  street  of  the  15 
'place,  and  saw  its  steeple-clock  (then  striking  Eight)  and 
'  Schiddthiirm  (Jail),  and  the  aproned  or  disaproned  Burgh- 
'ers  moving-in  to  breakfast  :  a  little  dog,  in  mad  terror, 
'  was  rushing  past  ;  for  some  human  imps  had  tied  a  tin- 
'  kettle  to  its  tail ;  thus  did  the  agonised  creature,  loud-  20 
'  jingling,  career  through  the  whole  length  of  the  Borough, 
'and  become  notable  enough.  Fit  emblem  of  many  a 
'  Conquering  Hero,  to  whom  Fate  (wedding  Fantasy  to 
'  Sense,  as  it  often  elsewhere  does)  has  malignantly  ap- 
'  pended  a  tin-kettle  of  Ambition,  to  chase  him  on  ;  25 
'  which,  the  faster  he  runs,  urges  him  the  faster,  the  more 
'  loudly  and  more  foolishly !  Fit  emblem  also  of  much 
'  that  awaited  myself,  in  that  mischievous  Den  ;  as  in 
*  the  world,  whereof  it  was  a  portion  and  epitome ! 

'  Alas,  the  kind  beech-rows  of  Entepfuhl  were  hidden  30 
'  in  the  distance  :  I  was  among  strangers,  harshly,  at  best 
'  indifferently,  disposed  towards  me  ;  the  young  heart  felt, 
'  for  the  first  time,  quite  orphaned  and  alone.'     His  school- 
fellows, as  is  usual,  persecuted  him:  'They  were  Boys,' 


94 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


he  says,  '  mostly  rude  Boys,  and  obeyed  the  impulse  of 
'rude  Nature,  which  bids  the  deer-herd  fall  upon  any 
'  stricken  hart,  the  duck-flock  put  to  death  any  broken- 
'  winged  brother  or  sister,  and  on  all  hands  the  strong 
5  'tyrannise  over  the  weak.'  He  admits  that  though  'per- 
haps in  an  unusual  degree  morally  courageous,'  he  suc- 
ceeded ill  in  battle,  and  would  fain  have  avoided  it ;  a 
result,  as  it  would  appear,  owing  less  to  his  small  per- 
sonal   stature    (for   in   passionate    seasons,   he    was  '  in- 

lo  credibly  nimble'),  than  to  his  'virtuous  principles':  'if 
'  it  was  disgraceful  to  be  beaten,'  says  he  '  it  was  only  a 
'  shade  less  disgraceful  to  have  so  much  as  fought ;  thus 
'  was  I  drawn  two  ways  at  once,  and  in  this  important 
'element  of    school-history,    the  war-element,  had    little 

15  'but  sorrow.'  On  the  whole,  that  same  excellent  'Pas- 
sivity,' so  notable  in  Teufelsdrockh's  childhood,  is  here 
visibly  enough  again  getting  nourishment.  '  He  wept 
'  often  ;  indeed  to  such  a  degree  that  he  was  nicknamed 
'  Der  Wehicnde  (the  Tearful),  which  epithet,  till  towards 

20  '  his  thirteenth  year,  was  indeed  not  quite  unmerited. 
'Only  at  rare  intervals  did  the  young  soul  burst-forth 
'  into  fire-eyed  rage,  and,  with  a  Stormfulness  (  Ungestilni) 
'  under  which  the  boldest  quailed,  assert  that  he  too  had 
'  Rights  of  Man,  or  at  least  of  Mankin.'     In  all  which, 

25  who  does  not  discern  a  fine  flower-tree  and  cinnamon- 
tree  (of  genius)  nigh  choked  among  pumpkins,  reed-grass, 
and  ignoble  shrubs  ;  and  forced,  if  it  would  live,  to  struggle 
upwards  only,  and  not  outwards  ;  into  a  //<f4''^^/ quite  sickly, 
and  disproportioned  to  its  breadth  ? 

30  We  find,  moreover,  that  his  Greek  and  Latin  were 
'  mechanically '  taught ;  Hebrew  scarce  even  mechani- 
cally ;  much  else  which  they  called  History,  Cosmography, 
Philosophy,  and  so  forth,  no  better  than  not  at  all.  So 
that,  except  inasmuch  as  Nature  was  still  busy ;  and  he 


PEDAGOGY.  95 

himself  '  went  about,  as  was  of  old  his  wont,  among  the 
Craftsmen's  workshops,  there  learning  many  things  ; ' 
and  farther  lighted  on  some  small  store  of  curious  read- 
ing, in  Hans  Wachtel  the  Cooper's  house,  where  he 
lodged,  —  his  time,  it  would  appear,  was  utterly  wasted.  5 
Which  facts  the  Professor  had  not  yet  learned  to  look 
upon  with  any  contentment.  Indeed,  throughout  the 
whole  of  this  Bag  Scorpio,  where  we  now  are,  and  often' 
in  the  following  Bag,  he  shews  himself  unusually  animated 
on  the  matter  of  Education,  and  not  without  some  touch  10 
of  what  we  might  presume  to  be  anger. 

'  My   teachers,'    says    he,  '  were    hide-bound    Pedants, 
'  without  knowledge   of   man's    nature   or    of  boy's  ;    or 
'  of    aught    save   their  lexicons    and    quarterly    account- 
'  books.    Innumerable  dead  Vocables  (no  dead  Language,  15 
'  for  they  themselves  knew  no  Language)  they  crammed 
'into  us,  and   called    it  fostering  the  growth    of   mind. 
'  How  can  an  inanimate,  mechanical  Gerund-grinder,  the 
'  like  of  whom  will,  in  a  subsequent  century,  be  manu- 
'  factured  at  Niirnberg  out  of  wood  and  leather,  foster  the  20 
'  growth  of  anything  ;  much  more  of  Mind,  which  grows, 
'  not  like  a  vegetable  (by  having  its   roots  littered  with 
'  etymological  compost),  but  like  a  Spirit,  by  mysterious 
'  contact  of  Spirit ;   Thought   kindling  itself   at  the  fire 
'  of  living   Thought  ?     How    shall   he   give    kindling,  in  25 
'  whose  own  inward  man  there  is  no  live  coal,  but  all  is 
'  burnt-out  to  a  dead  grammatical  cinder .?     The  Hinter- 
'  schlag  Professors    knew    syntax    enough ;    and    of   the 
'  human  soul  thus   much  :    that  it   had   a   faculty  called 
'  Memory,  and  could  be  acted-on  through  the  muscular  30 
'  integument  by  appliance  of  birch-rods. 

'  Alas,  so  is  it  everywhere,  so  will  it  ever  be  ;  till  the 
'  Hodman  is  discharged,  or  reduced  to  hodbearing  ;  and 
'  an  Architect  is  hired,  and  on  all  hands  fitly  encouraged; 


96  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

tin  communities  and  individuals  discover,  not  without 
surprise,  that  fashioning  the  souls  of  a  generation  by 
Knowledge  can  rank  on  a  level  with  blowing  their  bod- 
ies to  pieces  by  Gunpowder  ;  that  with  Generals  and 
Fieldmarshals  for  killing,  there  should  be  world-honoured 
Dignitaries,  and  were  it  possible,  true  God-ordained 
Priests,  for  teaching.  But  as  yet,  though  the  Soldier 
wears  openly,  and  even  parades,  his  butchering-tool, 
nowhere,  far  as  I  have  travelled,  did  the  Schoolmaster 
make  show  of  his  instructing-tool  :  nay  were  he  to  walk 
abroad  with  birch  girt  on  thigh,  as  if  he  therefrom  ex- 
pected honour,  would  there  not,  among  the  idler  class, 
perhaps  a  certain  levity  be  excited  ? ' 
In  the  third  year  of  this  Gymnasic  period,  Father  An- 

15  dreas  seems  to  have  died:  the  young  Scholar,  otherwise 
so  maltreated,  saw  himself  for  the  first  time  clad  out- 
wardly in  sables,  and  inwardly  in  quite  inexpressible 
melancholy.  'The  dark  bottomless  Abyss,  that  lies  un- 
der our  feet,  had  yawned  open  ;  the  pale  kingdoms  of 
Death,  with  all  their  innumerable  silent  nations  and  gen- 
erations stood  before  him  ;  the  inexorable  word.  Never  ! 
now  first  shewed  its  meaning.  My  Mother  wept,  and 
her  sorrow  got  vent  ;  but  in  my  heart  there  lay  a  whole 
lake  of  tears,   pent-up  in  silent  desolation.     Neverthe- 

25  less  the  unworn  Spirit  is  strong  ;  Life  is  so  healthful 
that  it  even  finds  nourishment  in  Death  :  these  stern 
experiences,  planted  down  by  Memory  in  my  Imagina- 
tion, rose  there  to  a  whole  cypress-forest,  sad  but  beauti- 
ful ;  waving,  with  not  unmelodious  sighs,  in  dark  luxu- 

30  riance,  in  the  hottest  sunshine,  through  long  years  of 
youth  :  —  as  in  manhood  also  it  does,  and  will  do  ;  for 
I  have  now  pitched  my  tent  under  a  Cypress-tree  ;  the 
Tomb  is  now  my  inexpugnable  Fortress,  ever  close  by 
the  gate  of  which  I  look  upon  the  hostile  armaments, 


PEDAGOGY.  97 

and  pains  and  penalties  of  tyrannous  Life  placidly 
enough,  and  listen  to  its  loudest  threatenings  with  a 
still  smile.  O  ye  loved  ones,  that  already  sleep  in  the 
noiseless  Bed  of  Rest,  whom  in  life  I  could  only  weep 
for  and  never  help  ;  and  ye,  who  wide-scattered  still  5 
toil  lonely  in  the  monster-bearing  Desert,  dyeing  the 
flinty  ground  with  your  blood,  —  yet  a  little  while,  and 
we  shall  all  meet  there,  and  our  Mother's  bosom  will 
screen  us  all ;  and  Oppression's  harness,  and  Sorrow's 
fire-whip,  and  all  the  Gehenna  Bailiffs  that  patrol  and  10 
inhabit  ever-vexed  Time,  cannot  thenceforth  harm  us 
any  more  !  ' 

Close  by   which   rather   beautiful    apostrophe,    lies   a 
laboured  Character  of  the  deceased  Andreas  Futteral  ; 
of  his   natural   ability,  his   deserts   in   life  (as   Prussian  15 
Sergeant);  with  long  historical  inquiries  into  the  gene- 
alogy of  the  Futteral  Family,  here  traced  back  as  far  as 
Henry  the  Fowler  :  the  whole  of  which  we   pass  over, 
not  without  astonishment.     It  only  concerns  us  to  add, 
that  now  was  the  time  when  Mother  Gretchen  revealed  20 
to  her  foster-son  that  he  was  not  at  all  of  this  kindred  ; 
or  indeed  of  any  kindred,  having  come  into   historical 
existence  in  the  way  already  known  to  us.     '  Thus  was  I 
doubly  orphaned,'  says  he  ;  '  bereft  not  only  of  Posses- 
sion, but  even  of  Remembrance.     Sorrow  and  Wonder,  25 
here  suddenly  united,  could  not  but  produce  abundant 
fruit.    Such  a  disclosure,  in  such  a  season,   struck  its 
roots  through  my  whole  nature  ;  ever  till  the  years  of 
mature  manhood,  it  mingled  with  my  whole  thoughts, 
was  as  the  stem  whereon  all  my  day-dreams  and  night-  30 
dreams  grew.     A  certain  poetic   elevation,   yet   also    a^^ 
corresponding  civic  depression,  it  naturally  imparted  rj 
I  was  like  710  other ;    in  which  fixed-idea,  leading  some- 
times to  highest,  and  oftener  to  frightfullest  results,  may 


gS  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  there  not  lie  the  first  spring  of  tendencies,  which  in  my 
'  Life  have  become  remarkable  enough  ?  As  in  birth, 
'so  in  action,  speculation,  and  social  position,  my  fellows 
'  are  perhaps  not  numerous.' 

5  In  the  Bag  Sagittarius,  as  we  at  length  discover,  Teu- 
felsdrockh  has  become  a  University  man  ;  though  how, 
when,  or  of  what  quality,  will  nowhere  disclose  itself  with 
the  smallest  certainty.  Few  things,  in  the  way  of  confu- 
sion and  capricious  indistinctness,  can  now  surprise  our 

TO  readers  ;  not  even  the  total  want  of  dates,  almost  without 
parallel  in  a  Biographical  work.  So  enigmatic,  so  cha- 
otic we  have  always  found,  and  must  always  look  to  find, 
these  scattered  Leaves.  In  Sagittarijts,  however,  Teufels- 
drockh  begins  to  shew  himself  even  more  than  usually 

15  Sibylline:  fragments  of  all  sorts;  scraps  of  regular 
Memoir,  College-Exercises,  Programs,  Professional  Tes- 
timoniums,  Milkscores,  torn  Billets,  sometimes  to  appear- 
ance of  an  amatory  cast  ;  all  blown  together  as  if  by 
merest  chance,  henceforth  bewilder  the  sane  Historian. 

20  To  combine  any  picture  of  these  University,  and  the 
subsequent  years  ;  much  more,  to  decipher  therein  any 
illustrative  primordial  elements  of  the  Clothes-Philoso- 
phy, becomes  such  a  problem  as  the  reader  may  imagine. 
So  much  we  can  see ;  darkly,  as  through  the  foliage  of 

25  some  wavering  thicket  :  a  youth  of  no  common  endow- 
ment, who  has  passed  happily  through  Childhood,  less 
happily  yet  still  vigorously  through  Boyhood,  now  at 
length  perfect  in  '  dead  vocables,'  and  set  down,  as  he 
hopes,  by  the  living  Fountain,  there  to  superadd  Ideas 

30  and  Capabilities.  From  such  Fountain  he  draws,  dili- 
gently, thirstily,  yet  nowise  with  his  w^hole  heart,  for  the 
•water  nowise  suits  his  palate  ;  discouragements,  entangle- 
ments, aberrations  are  discoverable  or  supposable.  Nor 
perhaps  are  even  pecuniary  distresses  wanting ;  for  '  the 


PEDAGOGY.  ^g 

'  good  Gretchen,  who  in  spite  of  advices  from  not  disin- 
'  terested  relatives  has  sent  him  hither,  must  after  a  time 
'withdraw  her  willing  bift  too  feeble  hand.'  Neverthe- 
less in  an  atmosphere  of  Poverty  and  manifold  Chagrin, 
the  Humour  of  that  young  Soul,  what  character  is  in  him,  5 
first  decisively  reveals  itself ;  and,  like  strong  sunshine 
in  weeping  skies,  gives  out  variety  of  colours,  some  of 
which  are  prismatic.  Thus,  with  the  aid  of  Time,  and  of 
what  Time  brings,  has  the  stripling  Diogenes  Teufels- 
drockh  waxed  into  manly  stature ;  and  into  so  question-  10 
able  an  aspect,  that  we  ask  with  new  eagerness.  How  he 
specially  came  by  it,  and  regret  anew  that  there  is  no 
more  explicit  answer.  Certain  of  the  intelligible  and 
partially  significant  fragments,  which  are  few  in  number, 
shall  be  extracted  from  that  Limbo  of  a  Paper-bag,  and  15 
presented  with  the  usual  preparation. 

As  if,  in  the  Bag  ScorJ>w,  Teufelsdrockh  had  not  al- 
ready expectorated  his  antipedagogic  spleen ;  as  if,  from 
the  name  Sagittarius,  he  had  thought  himself  called  upon 
to  shoot  arrows,  we  here  again  fall-in  with  such  matter  as  20 
this  :  '  The  University  where  I  was  educated  still  stands 
vivid  enough  in  my  remembrance,  and  I  know  its  name 
well ;  which  name,  however,  I,  from  tenderness  to  exist- 
ing interests  and  persons,  shall  in  nowise  divulge.     It 
is    my  painful   duty  to   say   that,   out  of   England   and  25 
Spain,   ours   was   the  worst  of  all    hitherto   discovered 
Universities.     This  is  indeed  a  time  when  right  Educa- 
tion   is,    as    nearly   as    may  be,    impossible :    however, 
in  degrees  of  wrongness  there  is  no  limit  :  nay,  I  can 
conceive  a  worse  system  than  that  of  the  Nameless  it-  30 
self ;  as  poisoned  victual  may  be  worse  than  absolute 
hunger. 

'  It  is  written,   When   the  blind  lead  the  blind,  both 
shall  fall    into  the  ditch  ;   wherefore,  in  such   circum- 


oo  SA/^TOA'   RESAKTUS. 

Stances,  may  it  not  sometimes  be  safer,  if  both  leader 
and  led  simply — sit  still  ?  Had  you,  anywhere  in  Crim 
Tartary,  walled-in  a  square  enclosure  ;  furnished  it  with 
a  small,  ill-chosen  Library  ;  and  then  turned  loose  into 
it  eleven-hundred  Christian  striplings,  to  tumble  about 
as  they  listed,  from  three  to  seven  years  :  certain  per- 
sons, under  the  title  of  Professors,  being  stationed  at 
the  gates,  to  declare  aloud  that  it  was  a  University,  and 
exact  considerable  admission-fees,  —  you  had,  not  in- 
deed in  mechanical  structure,  yet  in  spirit  and  result, 
some  imperfect  resemblance  of  our  High  .Seminary.  I 
say,  imperfect;  for  if  our  mechanical  structure  was  quite 
other,  so  neither  was  our  result  altogether  the  same  : 
unhappily,  we  were  not  in  Crim  Tartary,  but  in  a  cor- 
rupt European  city,  full  of  smoke  and  sin  ;  moreover,  in 
the  middle  of  a  Public,  which,  without  far  costlier  ap- 
paratus, than  that  of  the  Square  Enclosure,  and  Decla- 
ration aloud,  you  could  not  be  sure  of  gulling. 

*  Gullible,  however,  by  fit  apparatus,  all  Publics  are  ; 
and  gulled,  with  the  most  surprising  profit.  Towards 
any  thing  like  a  Statistics  of  Impostwe,  indeed,  little  as 
yet  has  been  done  :  with  a  strange  indifference,  our  Econ- 
omists, nigh  buried  under  Tables  for  minor  Branches 
of  Industry,  have  altogether  overlooked  the  grand  all- 
overtopping  Hypocrisy  Branch ;  as  if  our  whole  arts  of 
Puffery,  of  Quackery,  Priestcraft,  Kingcraft,  and  the 
innumerable  other  crafts  and  mysteries  of  that  genus, 
had  not  ranked  in  Productive  Industry  at  all !  Can  any 
one,  for  example,  so  much  as  say.  What  moneys,  in  Lit- 
erature and  Shoeblacking,  are  realised  by  actual  In- 
struction and  actual  jet  Polish  ;  what  by  fictitious-per- 
suasive Proclamation  of  such ;  specifying,  in  distinct 
items,  the  distributions,  circulations,  disbursements,  in- 
comings of  said  moneys,  with  the  smallest  approach  to 


PEDAGOGY.  lOi 

>  •>      3  \     ' 

'accuracy?     But  to  ask,  How  far.  in' all'  the  several  infi- 
'  nitely-complected   departments   of   social    bui>iness,  *  in  • 
'government,  education,  in  manual,  commercial,  intellect- 
'  ual  fabrication  of  every  sort,  man's  Want  is  supplied  by 
'  true  Ware ;   how  far  by  the  mere  appearance  of   true    5 

*  Ware  :  —  in   other  words,    To   what    extent,   by   what 

*  methods,  with  what  effects,  in  various  times  and  coun- 
'  tries.  Deception  takes  the  place  and  wages  of  Perform- 
'ance:   here  truly  is  an  Inquiry  big  with  results  for  the 
'future    time,   but  to  which   hitherto  only  the  vaguest  10 
'  answer  can  be  given.     If  for  the  present,  in  our  Europe, 

'  we  estimate  the  ratio  of  Ware  to  Appearance  of  Ware  so 
'high  even  as  at  One  to  a  Hundred  (which  considering 
'  the  Wages  of  a  Pope,  Russian  Autocrat,  or  English  Game- 
'  Preserver,  is  probably  not  far  from  the  mark), — what  15 
'  almost  prodigious  saving  may  there  not  be  anticipated, 
'  as  the  Statistics  of  Imposture  advances,  and  so  the  man- 
'  ufacturing  of  Shams  (that  of  Realities  rising  into  clearer 
'  and  clearer  distinction  therefrom)  gradually  declines, 
'  and  at  length  becomes  all  but  wholly  unnecessary  !  20 

'This  for  the  coming  golden  ages.  What  I  had  to 
'  remark,  for  the  present  brazen  one,  is,  that  in  several 
'  provinces,  as  in  Education,  Polity,  Religion,  where  so 
'  much  is  wanted  and  indispensable,  and  so  little  can  as 
'  yet  be  furnished,  probably  Imposture  is  of  sanative,  25 
'  anodyne  nature,  and  man's  Gullibility  not  his  worst 
'  blessing.  Suppose  your  sinews  of  war  quite  broken ; 
'  I  mean  your  military  chest  insolvent,  forage  all  but 
'  exhausted  ;  and  that  the  whole  army  is  about  to  mutiny, 
'disband,  and  cut  your  and  each  other's  throat,  —  then  30 
'were  it  not  well  could  you,  as  if  by  miracle,  pay  them  in 
'  any  sort  of  fairy-money,  feed  them  on  coagulated  water, 
'  or  mere  imagination  of  meat  ;  whereby,  till  the  real  sup- 
'  ply  came  up,  they  might  be  kept  together  and  quiet  ? 


,   ,  o  2  -^-'^  ^^'  ^OA'   KESA  A'  TUS. 

,  '.Such  perhaps  was  the  aim  of  Nature,  who  does  nothing 
,  'Vwlthcnit  "lim.'  in  furnishing  her  favourite,  Man,  with  this 

'  his  so  omnipotent  or  rather  omnipatient  Talent  of  being 

'  Gulled. 
5       *  How  beautifully  it  works,  with  a  little  mechanism  ; 

*  nay,  almost  makes  mechanism  for  itself  !     These  Pro- 
'  fessors  in  the  Nameless  lived  with  ease,  with  safety,  by 

*  a  mere  Reputation  constructed  in  past  times,  and  then 
'  too  with  no  great  effort  by  quite  another  class  of  per- 

10  'sons.  Which  Reputation,  hke  a  strong  brisk-going  un- 
'  dershot  wheel,  sunk  into  the  general  current,  bade  fair, 
'  with  only  a  little  annual  repainting  on  their  part,  to  hold 
'  long  together,  and  of  its  own  accord  assiduously  grind 
'  for  them.     Happy  that  it  was  so,  for  the  Millers  !     They 

1 5  '  themselves  needed  not  to  work  ;  their  attempts  at  work- 
'ing,  at  what  they  called  Educating,  now  when  I  look 
'  back  on  it,  fill  me  with  a  certain  mute  admiration. 

'  Besides  all  this,  we  boasted  ourselves  a  Rational  Uni- 
'  versity ;    in  the  highest  degree  hostile   to   Mysticism ; 

20  '  thus  was  the  young  vacant  mind  furnished  with  much 
'talk  about  Progress  of  the  Species,  Dark  Ages,  Preju- 
*dice,  and  the  like;  so  that  all  were  quickly  enough 
'  blown  out  into  a  state  of  windy  argumentativeness  ; 
'  whereby  the  better  sort  had  soon  to  end  in  sick,  impo- 

25  '  tent  Scepticism ;  the  worser  sort  explode  {crepii'e?i)  in 
'  finished  Self-conceit,  and  to  all  spiritual  intents  become 
'  dead.  —  But  this  too  is  portion  of  mankind's  lot.  If  our 
'  era  is  the  Era  of  Unbelief,  why  murmur  under  it ;  is 
'  there  not  a  better  coming,  nay  come  ?     As  in  long-drawn 

30  '  systole  and  longdrawn  diastole,  must  the  period  of 
'  Faith  alternate  with  the  period  of  Denial ;  must  the 
'vernal  growth,  the  summer  luxuriance  of  all  Opinions, 
'  Spiritual  Representations  and  Creations,  be  folbwed  by, 
'  and  again  follow,  the  autumnal  decay,  the  winter  disso- 


PEDAGOGY. 


03 


'  lution.  For  man  lives  in  Time,  has  his  whole  earthly 
'  being,  endeavour,  and  destiny  shaped  for  him  by  Time  : 
'  only  in  the  transitory  Time-Symbol  is  the  ever-motionless 
'  Eternity  we  stand  on  made  manifest.  And  yet,  in  such 
'  winter-seasons  of  Denial,  it  is  for  the  nobler-minded  per-  5 
'  haps  a  comparative  misery  to  have  been  born,  and  to  be 
'  awake  and  work ;  and  for  the  duller  a  felicity,  if,  like 
'hibernating  animals,  safe-lodged  in  some  Salamanca 
'  University,  or  Sybaris  City,  or  other  superstitious  or  vol- 
'  uptuous  Castle  of  Indolence,  they  can  slumber-through,  10 
'  in  stupid  dreams,  and  only  awaken  when  the  loud-roar- 
'  ing  hailstorms  have  all  done  their  work,  and  to  our  pray- 
'  ers  and  martyrdoms  the  new  Spring  has  been  vouch- 
'  safed.' 

That  in  the   environment,   here    mysteriously    enough  15 
shadowed  forth,  Teufelsdrockh  must  have  felt  ill  at  ease, 
cannot  be  doubtful.    '  The  hungry  young,'  he  says,  *  looked 
'  up  to  their  spiritual  Nurses  ;  and,  for  food,  were  bidden 
'  eat  the  east-wind.       What  vain  jargon  of  controversial 
'  Metaphysic,   Etymology,   and    mechanical   Manipulation  20 
'  falsely   named    Science,  was    current    there,    I    indeed 
'  learned,  better  perhaps  than  the  most.     Among  eleven- 
'  hundred   Christian    youths,   there  will    not   be   wanting 
'  some  eleven  eager  to  learn.     By  collision  with  such,  a 
'certain  warmth,  a  certain  polish  was  communicated  ;  by  25 
'  instinct  and  happy  accident,  I  took  less  to  rioting  {re- 
'  fio??miiren),  than  to  thinking  and  reading,  which  latter 
'  also  I  was  free  to  do.     Nay  from  the  chaos  of  that  Li- 
'  brary,    I   succeeded  in  fishing-up   more  books  perhaps 
'  than  had  been  known  to  the  very  keepers  thereof.     The  30 
'  foundation  of  a  Literary  Life  was  hereby  laid  :  I  learned, 
'  on  my  own  strength,  to  read  fluently  in  almost  all  culti- 
'  vated  languages,  on  almost  all  subjects   and   sciences; 
'  farther,  as  man  is  ever  the  prime  object  to  man,  already 


104  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  it  was  my  favourite  employment  to  read  character  in 
'  speculation,  and  from  the  Writing  to  construe  the  Writer. 
'  A  certain  groundplan  of  Human  Nature  and  Life  began 
'  to  fashion  itself  in  me ;  wondrous  enough,  now  when  I 
5  '  look  back  on  it  ;  for  my  whole  Universe,  physical  and 
'  spiritual,  was  as  yet  a  Machine  !  However,  such  a  con- 
*  scious,  recognised  groundplan,  the  truest  I  had,  was 
'  beginning  to  be  there,  and  by  additional  experiments, 
'might  be  corrected  and  indefinitely  extended.' 

10  Thus  from  poverty  does  the  strong  educe  nobler  wealth  ; 
thus  in  the  destitution  of  the  wild  desert,  does  our  young 
Ishmael  acquire  for  himself  the  highest  of  all  possessions, 
that  of  Self-help.  Nevertheless  a  desert  this  was,  waste, 
and  howling  with  savage  monsters.     Teufelsdrockh  gives 

15  us  long  details  of  his  'fever-paroxysms  of  Doubt;'  his 
Inquiries  concerning  Miracles,  and  the  Evidences  of  re- 
ligious Faith  ;  and  how  '  in  the  silent  night-watches,  still 
'darker  in  his  heart  than  over  sky  and  earth,  he  has  cast 
'  himself  before  the  All-seeing,  and  with  audible  prayers, 

20  '  cried  vehemently  for  Light,  for  deliverance  from  Death 
'  and  the  Grave.  Not  till  after  long  years,  and  unspeaka- 
'ble  agonies,  did  the  believing  heart  surrender  ;  sink  into 
'  spell-bound  sleep,  under  the  nightmare.  Unbelief  ;  and, 
'  in  this  hag-ridden  dream,  mistake  God's  fair  living  world 

25  'for  a  pallid,  vacant  Hades  and  extinct  Pandemonium. 
'But  through  such  Purgatory  pain,'  continues  he,  'it  is 
'  appointed  us  to  pass  ;  first  must  the  dead  Letter  of 
'  Religion  own  itself  dead,  and  drop  piecemeal  into  dust, 
'  if  the  living  Spirit  of  Religion,  freed  from  this  its  char- 

30  'nel-house,  is  to  arise  on  us,  newborn  of  Heaven,  and 
'with  new  healing  under  its  wings.' 

To  which  Purgatory  pains,  seemingly  severe  enough,  if 
we  add  a  liberal  measure  of  Earthly  distresses,  want  of 
practical   guidance,  want  of   sympathy,  want  of  money. 


PEDAGOGY. 


05 


want  of  hope  ;  and  all  this  in  the  fervid  season  of  youth, 
so  exaggerated  in  imagining,  so  boundless  in  desires,  yet 
here  so  poor  in  means,  —  do  we  not  see  a  strong  incipient 
spirit  oppressed  and  overloaded  from  without  and  from 
within  ;  the  fire  of  genius  struggling-up  among  fuel-wood  5 
of  the  greenest,  and  as  yet  with  more  of  bitter  vapour 
than  of  clear  flame  ? 

From  various  fragments  of  Letters  and  other  documen- 
tary scraps,  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  Teufelsdrockh,  isolated, 
shy,  retiring  as  he  was,  had  not  altogether  escaped  notice  :  10 
certain  established  men  are  aware  of  his  existence;  and, 
if  stretching-out  no  helpful  hand,  have  at  least  their  eyes 
upon  him.  He  appears,  though  in  dreary  enough  hu- 
mour, to  be  addressing  himself  to  tl>e  Profession  of  Law  ; 
—  whereof,  indeed,  the  world  has  since  seen  him  a  public  15 
graduate.  But  omitting  these  broken,  unsatisfactory 
thrums  of  Economical  relation,  let  us  present  rather  the 
following  small  thread  of  Moral  relation  ;  and  therewith, 
the  reader  for  himself  weaving  it  in  at  the  right  place, 
conclude  our  dim  arras-picture  of  these  University  years.    20 

'Here  also  it  was  that  I  formed  acquaintance  with 
'  Herr  Towgood,  or,  as  it  is  perhaps  better  written,  Herr 
'  Toughgut  ;  a  young  person  of  quality  {von  Adel),  from 
'  the  interior  parts  of  England.  He  stood  connected,  by 
'blood  and  hospitality,  with  the  Counts  von  Zahdarm,  in  25 
'  this  quarter  of  Germany  ;  to  which  noble  Family  I  like- 
'wise  was,  by  his  means,  with  all  friendliness,  brought 
*near.  Towgood  had  a  fair  talent,  unspeakably  ill-culti- 
'  vated ;  with  considerable  humour  of  character  :  and, 
'  bating  his  total  ignorance,  for  he  knew  nothing  except  30 
'  Boxing  and  a  little  Grammar,  showed  less  of  that  aristo- 
'cratic  impassivity,  and  silent  fury,  than  for  most  part 
'belongs  to  Travellers  of  his  nation.  To  him  I  owe  my 
'  first  practical  knowledge  of  the  English  and  their  ways  ; 


io6  SARTOK   KESARTUS. 

'perhaps  also  something  of  the  partiality  with  which  I 
'  have  ever  since  regarded  that  singular  people.  Tow- 
'  good  was  not  without  an  eye,  could  he  have  come  at  any 
'  light.  Invited  doubtless  by  the  presence  of  the  Zah- 
5  '  darm  Family,  he  had  travelled  hither,  in  the ,  almost 
'  frantic  hope  of  perfecting  his  studies ;  he,  whose  studies 
'  had  as  yet  been  those  of  infancy,  hither  to  a  University 
'where  so  much  as  the  notion  of  perfection,  not  to  say 
'  the  effort  after  it,  no  longer  existed  !     Often  we  would 

lo  '  condole  over  the  hard  destiny  of  the  Young  in  this  era : 
'  how,  after  all  our  toil,  we  were  to  be  turned-out  into  the 
'  world,  with  beards  on  our  chins  indeed,  but  with  few 
'  other  attributes  of  manhood ;  no  existing  thing  that  we 
'were  trained  to  Act  on,  nothing  that  we  could  so  much 

15  'as  Believe.  "  How  has  our  head  on  the  outside  a  pol- 
'  ished  Hat,"  w^ould  Towgood  exclaim,  "  and  in  the  inside 
'  Vacancy,  or  a  froth  of  Vocables  and  Attorney-Logic ! 
'  At  a  small  cost  men  are  educated  to  make  leather  into 
'  shoes  ;  but  at  a  great  cost,  what  am  I  educated  to  make? 

20  '  By  Heaven,  Brother  !  what  I  have  already  eaten  and 
'  worn,  as  I  came  thus  far,  would  endow  a  considerable 
'Hospital  of  Incurables." — "Man,  indeed,"  I  would 
'  answ^er,  "  has  a  Digestive  Faculty,  which  must  be  kept 
'  working,  were   it  even  partly  by  stealth.     But  as  for  our 

25  '  Miseducation,  make  not  bad  worse ;  waste  not  the  time 
'  yet  ours,  in  trampling  on  thistles  because  they  have 
'  yielded  us  no  figs.  F?'isck  zu,  B ruder  !  Here  are  Books, 
'  and  we  have  brains  to  read  them  ;  here  is  a  whole  Earth 

*  and  a  whole  Heaven,  and  we  have  eyes  to  look  on  them  : 
30  ^  Frisch  zu  .^" 

'  Often  also  our  talk  was  gay ;  not  without  brilliancy, 
'  and  even  fire.      We  looked-out  on  Life,  with  its  strange 

*  scaffolding,  where  all  at  once  harlequins  dance,  and  men 
'are  beheaded  and  quartered  :  motley,  not  unterrific  was 


GETTING   UNDER    WAY.  107 

the  aspect ;  but  we  looked  on  it  like  brave  youths.  For 
myself,  these  were  perhaps  my  most  genial  hours.  To- 
wards this  young  warmhearted,  strongheaded  and  wrong- 
headed  Herr  Towgood,  I  was  even  near  experiencing 
the  now  obsolete  sentiment  of  Friendship.  Yes,  foolish  5 
Heathen  that  I  was,  I  felt  that,  under  certain  condi- 
tions, I  could  have  loved  this  man,  and  taken  him  to 
my  bosom,  and  been  his  brother  once  and  always.  By 
degrees,  however,  I  understood  the  new  time,  and  its 
wants.  If  man's  Soul  is  indeed,  as  in  the  Finnish  Lan-  10 
guage,  and  Utilitarian  Philosophy,  a  kind  of  Stoinach, 
what  else  is  the  true  meaning  of  Spiritual  Union  but  an 
Eating  together?  Thus  we,  instead  of  Friends,  are 
Dinner-guests  ;  and  here  as  elsewhere  have  cast  away 
chimeras.'  15 

So  ends,  abruptly  as  is  usual,  and  enigmatically,  this 
little  incipient  romance.  What  henceforth  becomes  of 
the  brave  Herr  Towgood,  or  Toughgut?  He  has  dived- 
under,  in  the  Autobiographical  Chaos,  and  swims  we  see 
not  where.  Does  any  reader  'in  the  interior  parts  of  20 
England '  know  of  such  a  man  ? 


CHAPTER    IV. 


GETTING     UNDER     WAY. 


'Thus  nevertheless,'  writes  our  Autobiographer,  appar- 
ently as  quitting  College,  '  was  there  realised  Somewhat  ; 
'  namely,  I,  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  :  a  visible  Temporary 
'  Figure  (Zeitbild),  occupying  some  cubic  feet  of  Space,  25 
'  and  containing  within  it  Forces  both  physical  and  spir- 
'  itual  ;  hopes,  passions,  thoughts  ;    the  whole  wondrous 


io8  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

furniture,  in  more  or  less  perfection,  belonging  to  that 
mystery,  a  Man.  Capabilities  there  were  in  me  to  give 
battle,  in  some  small  degree,  against  the  great  Empire  of 
Darkness :  does  not  the  very  Ditcher  and  Delver,  with 
his  spade,  extinguish  many  a  thistle  and  puddle  ;  and  so 
leave  a  little  Order,  where  he  found  the  opposite?  Nay 
your  very  Daymoth  has  capabilities  in  this  kind ;  and  ever 
organises  something  (into  its  own  Body,  if  no  otherwise), 
which  was  before  Inorganic  ;  and  of  mute  dead  air  makes 
living  music,  though  only  of  the  faintest,  by  humming. 

'  How  much  more,  one  whose  capabilities  are  spiritual ; 
who  has  learned,  or  begun  learning,  the  grand  thauma- 
turgic  art  of  Thought !  Thaumaturgic  I  name  it  ; 
for  hitherto  all  Miracles  have  been  wrought  thereby, 
and  henceforth  innumerable  will  be  wrought ;  whereof 
we,  even  in  these  days,  witness  some.  Of  the  Poet's 
and  Prophet's  inspired  Message,  and  how  it  makes  and 
unmakes  whole  worlds,  I  shall  forbear  mention  ;  but 
cannot  the  dullest  hear  Steam-engines  clanking  around 
him  ?  Has  he  not  seen  the  Scottish  Brassmith's  Idea 
(and  this  but  a  mechanical  one)  travelling  on  fire-wings 
round  the  Cape,  and  across  two  Oceans ;  and  stronger 
than  any  other  Enchanter's  Familiar,  on  all  hands  un- 
weariedly  fetching  and  carrying :  at  home,  not  only 
weaving  Cloth ;  but  rapidly  enough  overturning  the 
whole  old  system  of  Society  ;  and,  for  Feudalism  and 
Preservation  of  the  Game,  preparing  us,  by  indirect  but 
sure  methods,  Industrialism  and  the  Government  of  the 
Wisest  ?  Truly  a  Thinking  Man  is  the  worst  enemy  the 
Prince  of  Darkness  can  have  ;  every  time  such  a  one 
announces  himself,  I  doubt  not,  there  runs  a  shudder 
through  the  Nether  Empire  ;  and  new  Emissaries  are 
trained,  with  new  tactics,  to,  if  possible,  entrap  him, 
and  hoodwink  and  handcuff  him. 


GETTING   UNDER    WAY.  109 

'  With  such  high  vocation  had  I  too,  as  denizen  of  the 
Universe,  been  called.      Unhappy  it  is,  however,  that 
though  born  to  the  amplest  Sovereignty,  in    this  way, 
with  no  less  than   sovereign   right  of  Peace  and  War 
against  the  Time-Prince  {Zeitfiirst),  or  Devil,  and  all  his    5 
Dominions,  your  c"bronation-ceremony  costs  such  trouble, 
your  sceptre  is  so  difficult  to  get  at,  or  even  to  get  eye 
on!' 
By  which  last  wiredrawn  similitude,  does  Teufelsdrockh 
mean  no  more  than  that  young  men  find   obstacles   in  i 
what  we  call  '  getting  under  way  '  ?     '  Not  what  I  Have, 
continues  he,  '  but  what  I  Do  is  my  Kingdom.     To  each 
is  given  a  certain  inward  Talent,  a  certain  outward  En- 
vironment of  Fortune  ;  to  each,  by  wisest  combination 
of  these  two,  a  certain  maximum  of  Capability.      But  15 
the  hardest  problem  were  ever  this  first :   To  find  by 
study  of  yourself,  and  of  the  ground  you  stand  on,  what 
your  combined  inward  and  outward  Capability  specially 
is.     For,  alas,  our  young  soul  is  all  budding  with  Capa- 
bilities, and  we  see  not  yet  which  is  the  main  and  true  20 
one.     Always  too  the  new  man  is  in  a  new  time,  under 
new  conditions ;  his  course  can  be  the  facsimile  of  no 
prior  one,  but  is  by  its  nature  original.     And  then  how 
seldom    will    the    outward    Capability    fit    the    inward  : 
though  talented  wonderfully  enough,  we  are  poor,  un-  25 
friendly,  dyspeptical,  bashful ;  nay,  what  is  worse  than 
all,  we  are  foolish.     Thus,  in  a  whole  imbroglio  of  Cap- 
abilities, we  go  stupidly  groping  about,  to  grope  which 
is  ours,  and  often  clutch  the  wrong  one  :  in  this  mad 
work  must  several  years  of  our  small  term  be  spent,  till  3° 
the  purblind  Youth,  by  practice,  acquire  notions  of  dis- 
tance, and  become  a  seeing  Man.     Nay,  many  so  spend 
their  whole  term,  and  in  ever-new  expectation,  ever-new 
disappointment,  shift  from  enterprise  to  enterprise,  and 


no  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  from  side  to  side  ;  till  at  length,  as  exasperated  strip- 
'  lings  of  threescore-and-ten,  they  shift  into  their  last 
'  enterprise,  that  of  getting  buried. 

'  Such,  since  the  most  of  us  are  too  ophthalmic,  would 
5  '  be  the  general  fate ;  were  it  not  that  one  thing  saves 
'  us  :  our  Hunger.  For  on  this  ground,  as  the  prompt 
'  nature  of  Hunger  is  well  known,  must  a  prompt  choice 
'  be  made :  hence  have  we,  with  wise  foresight,  Inden- 
'  tures    and    Apprenticeships    for   our    irrational    young ; 

lo  '  whereby,  in  due  season,  the  vague  universality  of  a  Man 
'  shall  find  himself  ready-moulded  into  a  specific  Crafts- 
'  man  ;  and  so  thenceforth  work,  with  much  or  with  little 
'  waste  of  Capability  as  it  may  be ;  yet  not  with  the  worst 
'  waste,  that  of  time.     Nay  even  in  matters  spiritual,  since 

15  'the  spiritual  artist  too  is  born  blind,  and  does  not,  like 

,     '  certain  other  creatures,  receive  sight  in  nine  days,  but 

"I"  ~"-'  far  later,  sometimes  never,  —  is  it  not  well  that  there 
'  should  be  what  we  call  Professions,  or  Bread-studies 
'  (Brodzivecke),  preappointed  us?      Here,  circling  like  the 

20  '  gin-horse,  for  whom  partial  or  total  blindness  is  no  evil, 
'  the  Bread-artist  can  travel  contentedly  round  and  round, 
'  still  fancying  that  it  is  forward  and  forward  ;  and  realise 
'  much :  for  himself  victual  ;  for  the  world  an  additional 
'  horse's  power  in   the   grand   corn-mill  or  hemp-mill  of 

25  '  Economic  Society.  For  me  too  had  such  a  leading- 
*  string  been  provided  ;  only  that  it  proved  a  neck-halter, 
'  and  had  nigh  throttled  me,  till  I  broke  it  off.  Then,  in 
'  the  words  of  Ancient  Pistol,  did  the  World  generally  be- 
'  come  mine  oyster,  which  I,  by  strength  or  cunning,  was 

30  '  to  open,  as  I  would  and  could.  Almost  had  I  deceased 
'  {fast  war''  ich  iwigekonwieri),  so  obstinately  did  it  continue 
'  shut.' 

We  see  here,  significantly  foreshadowed,  the  spirit  of 
much  that  was  to  befall  our  Autobiographer ;  the  histor- 


GETTING   UNDER    WAY.  m 

ical  embodiment  of  which,  as  it  painfully  takes  shape  in 
his  Life,  lies  scattered,  in  dim  disastrous  details,  through 
this  Bag  Pisces,  and  those  that  follow.  A  young  man  of 
high  talent,  and  high  though  still  temper,  like  a  young 
mettled  colt,  '  breaks-off  his  neck-halter,'  and  bounds  5 
forth,  from  his  peculiar  manger,  into  the  wide  world ; 
which,  alas,  he  finds  all  rigorously  fenced-in.  Richest 
clover-fields  tempt  his  eye;  but  to  him  they  are  for- 
bidden pasture  :  either  pining  in  progressive  starvation, 
he  must  stand  ;  or,  in  mad  exasperation,  must  rush  to  and  10 
fro,  leaping  against  sheer  stone-walls,  which  he  cannot 
leap  over,  which  only  lacerate  and  lame  him  ;  till  at  last, 
after  thousand  attempts  and  endurances,  he,  as  if  by 
miracle,  clears  his  way  :  not  indeed  into  luxuriant  and 
luxurious  clover,  yet  into  a  certain  bosky  wilderness  15 
where  existence  is  still  possible,  and  Freedom,  though 
waited  on  by  Scarcity,  is  not  without  sweetness.  In  a 
word,  Teufelsdrockh  having  thrown-up  his  legal  Profes- 
sion, finds  himself  without  landmark  of  outward  guid- 
ance ;  whereby  his  previous  want  of  decided  Belief,  or  20 
inward  guidance,  is  frightfully  aggravated.  Necessity 
urges  him  on ;  Time  will  not  stop,  neither  can  he,  a  Son 
of  Time  ;  wild  passions  without  solacement,  wild  facul- 
ties without  employment,  ever  vex  and  agitate  him.  He 
too  must  enact  that  stern  Monodrama,  No  Object  a?id  no  25 
Rest;  must  front  its  successive  destinies,  work  through  to 
its  catastrophe,  and  deduce  therefrom  what  moral  he  can. 
Yet  let  us  be  just  to  him,  let  us  admit  that  his  '  neck- 
halter  '  sat  nowise  easy  on  him  ;  that  he  was  in  some  de- 
gree forced  to  break  it  off.  If  we  look  at  the  young  30 
man's  civic  position,  in  this  Nameless  capital,  as  he 
emerges  from  its  Nameless  University,  we  can  discern 
well  that  it  was  far  from  enviable.  His  first  Law-Exam- 
ination he  has  come  through  triumphantly  ;  and  can  even 


112  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

boast  that  the  Examcn  Rigorositin  need  not  have  fright- 
ened him  :  but  though  he  is  hereby  '  an  Ausadtator  of 
respectability'  what  avails  it?  There  is  next  to  no  em- 
ployment to  be  had.  Neither  for  a  youth  without  con- 
5  nexions,  is  the  process  of  Expectation  very  hopeful  in 
itself ;  nor  for  one  of  his  disposition  much  cheered  from 
without.  '  My  fellow  Auscultators,'  he  says,  'were  Aus- 
'  cultators  :  they  dressed,  and  digested,  and  talked  artic- 
'  ulate  words  ;  other  vitality  shewed    they  almost  none. 

lo  '  Small  speculation  in  those  eyes,  that  they  did  glare 
'  withal  !  Sense  neither  for  the  high  nor  for  the  deep, 
'  nor  for  aught  human  or  divine,  save  only  for  the  faintest 
'  scent  of  coming  Preferment.'  In  which  words,  indicat- 
ing a  total  estrangement  on  the  part  of  Teufelsdrockh, 

15  may  there  not  also  lurk  traces  of  a  bitterness  as  from 
wounded  vanity?  Doubtless  these  prosaic  Auscultators 
may  'have  sniffed  at  him,  with  his  strange  ways  ;  and 
tried  to  hate,  and  what  was  much  more  impossible,  to 
despise  him.     Friendly  communion,  in    any  case,  there 

20  could  not  be  :  already  has  the  young  Teufelsdrockh  left 
the  other  young  geese ;  and  swims  apart,  though  as  yet 
uncertain  whether  he  himself  is  cygnet  or  gosling. 

Perhaps  too  what  little  employment  he  had  was  per- 
formed ill,  at  best  unpleasantly.     '  Great  practical  method 

25  and  expertness '  he  may  brag  of  ;  but  is  there  not  also 
great  practical  pride,  though  deep-hidden,  only  the  deeper- 
seated?  So  shy  a  man  can  never  have  been  popular. 
We  figure  to  ourselves,  how  in  those  days  he  may  have 
played   strange   freaks    with    his    independence,    and   so 

30  forth  :  do  not  his  own  words  betoken  as  much  ?  '  Like 
'  a  very  young  person,  I  Imagined  it  was  with  Work  alone, 
'  and  not  also  with  Folly  and  Sin,  in  myself  and  others, 
'that  I  have  been  appointed  to  struggle.'  Be  this  as  it 
may,  his  progress  from  the  passive  Auscultatorship,  to- 


GETTING   UNDER    WAY.  113 

wards  any  active  Assessorship,  is  evidently  of  the  slowest. 
By  degrees,  those  same  established  men,  once  partially 
inclined  to  patronise  him,  seem  to  withdraw  their  coun- 
tenance, and  give  him  up  as  'a  man  of  genius:'  against 
which   procedure   he,  in    these   Papers,   loudly  protests.    5 
As  if,'  says  he,  '  the  higher  did  not  presuppose  the  lower ; 
as  if  he  who  can  fly  into  heaven,  could  not  also  walk 
post  if   he    resolved    on    it  !     But  the  world  is  an  old 
woman,  and  mistakes  any  gilt  farthing  for  a  gold  coin  ; 
whereby  being  often  cheated  she  will  thenceforth  trust  10 
nothing  but  the  common  copper.' 
How  our  winged  sky-messenger,  unaccepted  as  a  ter- 
restrial runner,  contrived,  in  the  mean  while,  to  keep  him- 
self from  flying  skyward  without  return,  is  not  too  clear 
from   these   Documents.     Good    old  Gretchen  seems  to  15 
have  vanished  from  the  scene,  perhaps  from  the  Earth  ; 
other  Horn  of    Plenty,  or  even  of  Parsimony,  nowhere 
flows  for  him  ;  so  that  '  the   prompt  nature  of  Hunger 
being  well  known,'  we  are  not  without  our  anxiety.    From 
private  Tuition,  in  never  so  many  languages  and  sciences,  20 
the  aid  derivable  is  small  ;  neither,  to  use  his  own  words, 
does  the  young  Adventurer  hitherto  suspect  in  himself 
any  literary  gift ;    but  at   best    earns   bread-and-water 
wages,  by  his  wide  faculty  of  Translation.     Neverthe- 
less,' continues  he,  'that  I  subsisted  is  clear,  for  you  25 
find  me  even  now  alive.'     Which  fact,  however,  except 
upon  the  principle  of  our  true-hearted,  kind  old  Proverb, 
that  '  there  is  always  life  for  a  living  one,'  we  must  pro- 
fess ourselves  unable  to  explain. 

Certain  Landlords'   Bills,  and   other   economic  Docu-  30 
ments,  bearing  the  mark  of  Settlement,  indicate  that  he 
was  not  without  money ;  but,  like  an  independent  Hearth- 
holder,  if   not   House-holder,  paid  his   way.     Here  also 
occur,   among  many  others,  two  little   mutilated   Notes, 


114  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

which  perhaps  throw  Hght  on  his  condition.  The  first 
has  now  no  date,  or  writer's  name,  but  a  huge  Blot  ;  and 
runs  to  this  effect :  '  The  {Inkblot),  tied-down  by  previ- 
ous promise,  cannot,  except  by  best  wishes,  forward  the 
Herr  Teufelsdrockh's  views  on  the  Assessorship  in 
question  ;  and  sees  himself  under  the  cruel  necessity  of 
forbearing,  for  the  present,  what  were  otherwise  his 
duty  and  joy,  to  assist  in  opening  the  career  for  a  man 
of  genius,  on  whom  far  higher  triumphs  are  yet  waiting.' 
10  The  other  is  on  gilt  paper ;  and  interests  us  like  a  sort  of 
epistolary  mummy  now  dead,  yet  which  once  lived  and 
beneficently  worked.  We  give  it  in  the  original  :  '  Herr 
'  Teufelsdrockh  7aird  von  der  Frau  Grdfinn,  auf  Donners- 
'  tag,  zum  ^STHETiscHEN  Thee  schonstens  ei7igeladen.^ 
15  Thus  in  answer  to  a  cry  for  solid  pudding,  whereof 
there  is  the  most  urgent  need,  comes  epigrammatically 
enough,  the  invitation  to  a  wash  of  quite  fluid  Esthetic 
Tea  !  How  Teufelsdrockh,  now  at  actual  handgrips  with 
Destiny  herself,  may  have  comported  himself  among 
20  these  Musical  and  Literary  Dilettanti  of  both  sexes,  like 
a  hungry  lion  invited  to  a  feast  of  chickenweed,  we  can 
only  conjecture.  Perhaps  in  expressive  silence,  and  ab- 
stinence :  otherwise  if  the  lion,  in  such  case,  is  to  feast 
at  all,  it  cannot  be  on  the  chickenweed,  but  only  on  the 
25  chickens.  For  the  rest,  as  this  Frau  Grafinn  dates  from 
the  Zdhdarm  House,  she  can  be  no  other  than  the  Count- 
ess and  mistress  of  the  same  ;  whose  intellectual  tenden- 
cies, and  good  will  to  Teufelsdrockh,  whether  on  the  foot- 
ing of  Herr  Towgood,  or  on  his  own  footing,  are  hereby 
30  manifest.  That  some  sort  of  relation,  indeed,  continued, 
for  a  time,  to  connect  our  Autobiographer,  though  per- 
haps feebly  enough,  with  this  noble  House,  we  have  else- 
where express  evidence.  Doubtless,  if  he  expected 
patronage,  it  was   in   vain ;  enough  for  him  if  he  here 


GETTING   UNDER    WAY.  115 

obtained  occasional  glimpses  of  the  great  world,  from  which 
we  at  one  time  fancied  him  to  have  been  always  excluded. 
The  Zahdarms,'  says  he,  '  lived  in  the  soft,  sumptuous 
garniture  of  Aristocracy ;  whereto  Literature  and  Art, 
attracted  and  attached  from  without,  were  to  serve  as  5 
the  handsomest  fringing.  It  was  to  the  Gnddigen  Fran 
(her  Ladyship)  that  this  latter  improvement  was  due  : 
assiduously  she  gathered,  dexterously  she  fitted-on,  what 
fringing  was  to  be  had  ;  lace  or  cobweb,  as  the  place 
yielded.'  Was  Teufelsdrockh  also  a  fringe,  of  lace  or  10 
cobweb  ;  or  promising  to  be  such .''  '  With  his  Excellenz 
(the  Count),'  continues  he,  '  I  have  more  than  once  had 
the  honour  to  converse  ;  chiefly  on  general  affairs,  and 
the  aspect  of  the  world,  which  he,  though  now  past 
middle  life,  viewed  in  no  unfavourable  light ;  finding  15 
indeed,  except  the  Outrooting  of  Journalism  {die  aus- 
zurottejide  JournaHstik),  little  to  desiderate  therein.  On 
some  points,  as  his  Excellenz  was  not  uncholeric,  I 
found  it  more  pleasant  to  keep  silence.  Besides,  his 
occupation  being  that  of  Owning  Land,  there  might  be  20 
faculties  enough,  which,  as  superfluous  for  such  use, 
were  little  developed  in  him.' 

That  to  Teufelsdrockh  the  aspect  of  the  world  was 
nowise  so  faultless,  and  many  things  besides  '  the  Out- 
rooting  of  Journalism,'  might  have  seemed  improvements,  25 
we  can  readily  conjecture.  With  nothing  but  a  barren 
Auscultatorship  from  without,  and  so  many  mutinous 
thoughts  and  wishes  from  within,  his  position  was  no 
easy  one.  *  The  Universe,'  he  says,  'was  as  a  mighty 
'  Sphinx-riddle,  which  I  knew  so  little  of,  yet  must  rede,  30  ^ 
'  or  be  devoured.  In  red  streaks  of  unspeakable  gran- 
*  deur,  yet  also  in  the  blackness  of  darkness,  was  Life  to 
'  my  too-unfurnished  Thought,  unfolding  itself.  A  strange 
'  contradiction  lay  in  me  ;   and  I  as   yet  knew  not  the 


ii6  SAKTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  solution  of  it ;  knew  not  that  spiritual  music  can  spring 
'  only  from  discords  set  in  harmony  ;  that  but  for  Evil 
'  there  were  no  Good,  as  victory  is  only  possible  by 
'  battle.' 
5  'I  have  heard  affirmed  (surely  in  jest),'  observes  he 
elsewhere,  '  by  not  unphilanthropic  persons,  that  it  were 
'  a  real  increase  of  human  happiness,  could  all  young  men 
'  from  the  age  of  nineteen  be  covered  under  barrels,  or 
'  rendered  otherwise  invisible  ;    and  there  left  to  follow 

10  '  their  lawful  studies  and  callings,  till  they  emerged,  sad- 
'  der  and  wiser,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five.  With  which 
'  suggestion,  at  least  as  considered  in  the  light  of  a  prac- 
'  tical  scheme,  I  need  scarcely  say  that  I  nowise  coincide. 
'  Nevertheless  it  is  plausibly  urged  that,  as  young  ladies 

15  *  {Mddchen)  are,  to  mankind,  precisely  the  most  delightful 
'  in  those  years  ;  so  young  gentlemen  {Bilbcheti)  do  then 
*  attain  their  maximum  of  detestability.  Such  gawks 
'  {Gecken)  are  they,  and  foolish  peacocks,  and  yet  with 
'  such  a  vulturous  hunger  for  self-indulgence  ;  so  obstinate, 

20  '  obstreperous,  vain-glorious  ;  in  all  senses,  so  fro  ward  and 
'  so  forward.  No  mortal's  endeavour  or  attainment  will, 
'  in  the  smallest,  content  the  as  yet  unendeavouring,  un- 
'  attaining  young  gentleman;  but  he  could  make  it  all 
'  infinitely  better,  were  it  worthy  of  him.     Life  everywhere 

25  '  is  the  most  manageable  matter,  simply  as  a  question  in 
'  the  Rule-of-Three  :  multiply  your  second  and  third  term 
'  together,  divide  the  product  by  the  first,  and  your  quo- 
'  tient  will  be  the  answer,  —  which  you  are  but  an  ass  if 
'  you  cannot  come  at.     The  booby  has  not  yet  found-out, 

30  '  by  any  trial,  that,  do  what  one  will,  there  is  ever  a  cursed 
'  fraction,  oftenest  a  decimal  repeater,  and  no  net  integer 
'  quotient  so  much  as  to  be  thought  of.' 

In  which  passage  does  there  not  lie  an  implied  con- 
fession that  Teufelsdrockh  himself,  besides  his  outward 


GETTING   UNDER    WAY.  ny 

obstructions,  had    an    inward,   still    greater,   to    contend 
with ;    namely,   a  certain    temporary,   youthful,  yet    still 
afflictive  derangement  of   head  ?      Alas,  on    the  former 
side  alone,   his   case   was   hard   enough.     '  It  continues 
ever  true,'  says  he,  '  that  Saturn,  or  Chronos,  or  what  we    5 
call  Time,  devours  all  his  Children  :  only  by  incessant 
Running,   by  incessant  Working,   may  you    (for    some 
threescore-and-ten  years)  escape  him  ;   and  you  too  he 
devours  at  last.     Can  any  Sovereign,  or  Holy  Alliance 
of  Sovereigns,  bid  Time  stand  still;  even  in  thought,_io 
shake  themselves  free  of  Time  .'*     Our  whole  terrestrial/ 
being  is  based  on  Time,  and  built  of  Time  ;  it  is  wholly 
a  Movement,  a  Time-impulse  ;  Time  is  the  author  of 
it,  the    material   of    it.     Hence   also    our  Whole   Duty, 
which  is  to   move,  to  work,  —  in    the    right    direction.  15 
Are  not  our  Bodies  and  our  Souls  in  continual  move- 
ment, whether  we  will   or  not ;  in  a   continual  Waste, 
requiring  a  continual  Repair  ?     Utmost  satisfaction  of 
our  whole  outward  and  inward  Wants  were  but  satisfac- 
tion for  a  space  of  Time ;  thus,  whatso  we  have  done,  20 
is  done,  and  for  us  annihilated,  and  ever   must  we  go 
and  do  anew.     O  Time-Spirit,  how  hast  thou  environed 
and  imprisoned  us,  and  sunk  us  so  deep  in  thy  troub- 
lous  dim  Time-Element,  that,  only  in  lucid   moments, 
can  so  much   as  glimpses   of  our  upper  Azure   Home  25 
be  revealed  to  us  !     Me,  however,  as  a  Son  of  Time, 
unhappier  than  some  others,  was  Time  threatening  to 
eat   quite    prematurely ;    for,    strive    as   I   might,   there 
was  no  good  Running,  so  obstructed  was  the  path,  so 
gyved  were    the    feet.'     That    is    to    say,  we    presume,  30 
speaking  in  the  dialect  of  this  lower  world,  that  Teufels- 
drockh's  whole  duty  and  necessity  was,  like  other  men's, 
'  to  work,  —  in  the  right  direction,'  and  that  no  work  was 
to  be  had  ;  whereby  he  became  wretched  enough.     As 


Il8  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

was  natural  :  with  haggard  Scarcity  threatening  him  in 
the  distance ;  and  so  vehement  a  soul  languishing  in 
restless  inaction,  and  forced  thereby,  like  Sir  Hudibras's 
sword  by  rust, 

5  To  eat  into  itself,  for  lack 

Of  something  else  to  hew  and  hack  ! 

But  on  the  whole,  that  same  '  excellent  Passivity,'  as  it 
has  all  along  done,  is  here  again  vigorously  flourishing  ; 
in  which  circumstance  may  we  not  trace  the  beginnings 
10  of  much  that  now  characterises  our  Professor  ;  and  per- 
haps, in  faint  rudiments,  the  origin  of  the  Clothes-Philoso- 
phy itself?  Already  the  attitude  he  has  assumed  towards 
the  World  is  too  defensive  ;  not,  as  would  have  been 
desirable,  a  bold  attitude  of  attack.  '  So  far  hitherto,' 
1 5  he  says,  '  as  I  had  mingled  with  mankind,  I  was  notable, 
if  for  any  thing,  for  a  certain  stillness  of  manner,  which, 
as  my  friends  often  rebukingly  declared,  did  but  ill 
express  the  keen  ardour  of  my  feelings.  I,  in  truth, 
regarded  men  with  an  excess  both  of  love  and  of  fear. 
The  mystery  of  a  Person,  indeed,  is  ever  divine,  to  him 
that  has  a  sense  for  the  Godlike.  Often,  notwithstand- 
ing, was  I  blamed,  and  by  half-strangers  hated,  for  my 
so-called  Hardness  {Hdrte),  my  Indifferentism  towards 
men ;  and  the  seemingly  ironic  tone  I  had  adopted,  as 
my  favourite  dialect  in  conversation.  Alas,  the  panoply 
of  Sarcasm  was  but  as  a  buckram  case,  wherein  I  had 
striven  to  envelope  myself;  that  so  my  own  poor  Per- 
son might  live  safe  there,  and  in  all  friendliness,  being 
no  longer  exasperated  by  wounds.  Sarcasm  I  now  see 
to  be,  in  general,  the  language  of  the  Devil ;  for  which 
reason  I  have  long  since  as  good  as  renounced  it.  But 
how  many  individuals  did  I,  in  those  days,  provoke  into 
some  degree  of  hostility  thereby  !     An  ironic  man,  with 


25 


30 


GETTING    UNDER    WAY.  119 

his  sly  stillness,  and  ambuscading  ways,  more  especially 
an  ironic  young  man,  from  whom  it  is  least  expected, 
may  be  viewed  as  a  pest  to  society.  Have  we  not  seen 
persons  of  weight  and  name,  coming  forward,  with  gent- 
lest indifference,  to  tread  such  a  one  out  of  sight,  as  an  5 
insignificancy  and  worm,  start  ceiling-high  {palkcn/ioch), 
and  thence  fall  shattered  and  supine,  to  be  borne  home 
on  shutters,  not  without  indignation,  when  he  proved 
electric  and  a  torpedo  ! ' 

Alas,  how  can  a  man  with  this  devilishness  of  temper  10 
make  way  for  himself  in  Life  ;  where  the  first  problem, 
as  Teufelsdrockh  too  admits,  is  '  to  unite  yourself  with 
some  one,  and  with  somewhat  (sic/i  anzuschliesseii)  '?     Di- 
vision, not  union,  is  written  on  most  part  of  his  procedure. 
Let  us  add  too,  that,  in  no  great  length  of  time,  the  only  15 
important  connexion  he  had  ever  succeeded  in  forming, 
his  connexion  with  the  Zahdarm  Family,  seems  to  have 
been  paralysed,  for  all  practical  uses,  by  the  death  of  the 
'  not  uncholeric '  old  Count.     This  fact  stands  recorded, 
quite   incidentally,   in    a    certain   Discourse  o?i  Epitaphs^  20 
huddled  into  the  present  Bag,  among  so  much  else  ;  of 
which   Essay   the   learning   and   curious  penetration  are 
more  to  be  approved  of  than  the  spirit.      His  grand  prin- 
ciple is,  that  lapidary  inscriptions,   of  what  sort  soever, 
should  be  Historical  rather  than  Lyrical.     '  By  request  of  25 
that  worthy  Nobleman's  survivors,'  says  he,  '  I  under- 
took to  compose  his  Epitaph  ;  and  not  unmindful  of  my 
own  rules,  produced  the  following  ;   which  however,  for 
an  alleged  defect  of  Latinity,  a  defect  never  yet  fully 
visible  to  myself,  still  remains  unengraven  ; '  —  wherein,  30 
we  may   predict,  there   is   more   than  the   Latinity  that 
will  surprise  an  English  reader  : 


I20  SAA'7'OA'   KESARTUS. 

HIC    JACET 

PHILIPPUS  ZAEHDARM,  COGNOMINE  MAGNUS, 

Zaehdarmi  Comes 
ex  imperii  concilio, 
5    velleris  aurei,  periscelidis,  necnon  vulturis  nigri 

EQUES. 
QUI  DUM  SUB  LUNA  AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES    MILLE   PERDRICES 

PLUMBO    CONFECIT  : 

lo  VARII  CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA    MILLIES    CENTENA    MILLIA, 

PER    SE,    PERQUE    SeRVOS    QUADRUPEDES    BIPEDESVE, 

HAUD    SINE    TUMULTU    DEVOLVENS, 

IN    STERCUS 

15  PALAM    CONVERTIT. 

NUNC    A    LABORE    REQUIESCENTEM 

OPERA    SEQUUNTUR. 

SI    MONUMENTUM    QU^RIS, 

FIMETUM    ADSPICE. 

20   PRIMUM  IN  ORBE  DEJECIT  \stlb  dato\  ;   POSTREMUM   \silb  dato\. 


CHAPTER    V. 

ROMANCE. 


'  For  long  years,'  writes  Teufelsdrockh,  '  had  the  poor 
Hebrew,  in  this  Egypt  of  an  Auscultatorship,  painfully 
toiled,  baking  bricks  without  stubble,  before  ever  the 
question  once  struck  him  with  entire  force  :    For  what  ? 


ROMANCE.  121 

*  Beym  Himmel !  For  Food  and  Warmth  !  And  are 
'  Food  and  Warmth  nowhere  else,  in  the  whole  wide 
'Universe,    discoverable? — Come    of   it   what    might,    I 

*  resolved  to  try.' 

Thus  then  are  we  to  see  him  in  a  new  independent    5 
capacity,   though    perhaps    far    from    an    improved    one. 
Teufelsdrockh  is  now  a  man  without  Profession.     Quit- 
ting the  common  Fleet    of    herring-busses   and  whalers, 
where  indeed  his  leeward,  laggard  condition  was  painful 
enough,  he  desperately  steers  off,  on  a  course  of  his  own,  10 
by  sextant  and  compass  of  his  own.     Unhappy  Teufels- 
drockh !     Though  neither  Fleet,  nor  Traffic,  nor  Commo- 
dores  pleased  thee,  still   was   it   not   a   Fleet^  sailing  in 
prescribed  track,  for  fixed  objects  ;  above  all,  in  combina- 
tion, wherein,  by  mutual  guidance,  by  all  manner  of  loans  15 
and  borrowings,  each  could  manifoldly  aid    the    other? 
How  wilt  thou  sail  in  unknown  seas  ;  and  for  thyself  find 
that  shorter  Northwest  Passage  to  thy  fair  Spice-country 
of  a  Nowhere?  —  A  solitary  rover,  on  such  a  voyage,  with 
such  nautical  tactics,  will  meet  with  adventures.     Nay,  20 
as  we  forthwith  discover,  a  certain  Calypso-Island  detains 
him  at  the  very  outset ;  and  as  it  were  falsifies  and  over- 
sets his  whole  reckoning. 

'  If  in  youth,'  writes  he  once,  '  the  Universe  is  majesti- 
cally unveiling,  and  everywhere  Heaven  revealing  itself  25 
on  Earth,  nowhere  to  the  Young  Man  does  this  Heaven 
on  Earth  so  immediately  reveal  itself  as  in  the  Young 
Maiden.  Strangely  enough,  in  this  strange  life  of  ours, 
it  has  been  so  appointed.  On  the  whole,  as  I  have 
often  said,  a  Person  {Persdnlichkeit')  is  ever  holy  to  us  ;  30  ^^^^^ 
a  certain  orthodox  Anthropomorphism  connects  my  Mc 
with  all  Thees  in  bonds  of  Love  :  but  it  is  in  this  approx- 
imation of  the  Like  and  Unlike,  that  such  heavenly  at- 
traction, as  between  Negative  and  Positive,  first  burns- 


2  2  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

out  into  a  flame.  Is  the  pitifullest  mortal  Person,  think 
you,  indifferent  to  us?  Is  it  not  rather  our  heartfelt  wish 
to  be  made  one  with  him  ;  to  unite  him  to  us,  by  grati- 
tude, by  admiration,  even  by  fear  ;  or  failing  all  these, 
unite  ourselves  to  him?  But  how  much  more,  in  this 
case  of  the  Like-Unlike !  Here  is  conceded  us  the 
higher  mystic  possibility  of  such  a  union,  the  highest  in 
our  Earth  ;  thus,  in  the  conducting  medium  of  Fantasy, 
fiames-forth  that  y?;-6'-development  of  the  universal  Spir- 
itual Electricity,  which,  as  unfolded  between  man  and 
woman,  we  first  emphatically  denominate  Love. 

'  In  every  well-conditioned  stripling,  as  I  conjecture, 
there  already  blooms  a  certain  prospective  Paradise, 
cheered  by  some  fairest  Eve  ;  nor,  in  the  stately  vistas, 
and  flowerage  and  foliage  of  that  Garden,  is  a  Tree  of 
Knowledge,  beautiful  and  a\vful  in  the  midst  thereof, 
wanting.  Perhaps  too  the  whole  is  but  the  lovelier,  if 
Cherubim  and  a  Flaming  Sw^ord  divide  it  from  all  foot- 
steps of  men  ;  and  grant  him,  the  imaginative  stripling, 
only  the  view,  not  the  entrance.  Happy  season  of  vir- 
tuous youth,  when  shame  is  still  an  impassable  celestial 
barrier ;  and  the  sacred  air-cities  of  Hope  have  not 
shrunk  into  the  mean  clay-hamlets  of  Reality ;  and  man, 
by  his  nature,  is  yet  infinite  and  free  ! 

'  As  for  our  young  Forlorn,'  continues  Teufelsdrockh, 
evidently  meaning  himself,  '  in  his  secluded  way  of  life, 
and  with  his  glowing  Fantasy,  the  more  fiery  that  it 
burnt  under  cover,  as  in  a  reverberating  furnace,  his 
feeling  towards  the  Queens  of  this  Earth  was,  and 
indeed  is,  altogether  unspeakable.  A  visible  Divinity 
dwelt  in  them ;  to  our  young  Friend  all  women  w^ere 
holy,  were  heavenly.  As  yet  he  but  saw  them  flitting 
past,  in  their  many-coloured  angel-plumage  ;  or  hover- 
ing mute  and  inaccessible  on  the  outskirts  of  yEsthetic 


ROMANCE.  123 

Tea :  all  of  air  they  were,  all  Soul  and  Form  ;  so  lovely, 
like  mysterious  priestesses,  in  whose  hand  was  the  in- 
visible Jacob's-ladder,  whereby  man  might  mount  into 
very  Heaven.  That  he,  our  poor  Friend,  should  ever 
win  for  himself  one  of  these  Gracefuls  {Holden)  —  Ach  5 
Gott!  how  could  he  hope  it ;  should  he  not  have  died 
under  it?  There  was  a  certain  delirious  vertigo  in  the 
thought. 

*  Thus,  was  the  young  man,  if  all-sceptical  of  Demons 
and   Angels  such  as  the  vulgar  had  once  believed  in,  10 
nevertheless  not  unvisited  by  hosts  of    true  Sky-born, 
who  visibly  and  audibly  hovered  round  him  wheresoever 
he   went;    and  they  had   that   religious  worship  in  his 
thought,  though  as  yet  it  was  by  their  mere  earthly  and 
trivial  name  that  he  named  them.     But  now,  if  on  a  soul  15 
so  circumstanced,  some  actual  Air-maiden,  incorporated 
into    tangibility   and    reality,    should    cast   any  electric 
glance  of  kind  eyes,  saying  thereby,   "  Thou   too   may- 
est  love  and  be  loved  ;  "  and  so    kindle    him,  —  good 
Heaven,  what  a  volcanic,  earthquake-bringing,  all-con-  20 
suming  fire  were  probably  kindled  ! ' 
Such  a  fire,  it  afterwards  appears,  did  actually  burst- 
forth,  with  explosions  more  or  less  Vesuvian,  in  the  inner 
man  of  Herr  Diogenes  ;  as  indeed  how  could  it  fail  ?     A 
nature,  which,  in  his  own  figurative  style,  we  might  say,  25 
had  now  not  a  little  carbonised  tinder,  of   Irritability  ; 
with   so   much   nitre   of  latent   Passion,   and  sulphurous 
Humour  enough  ;  the  whole  lying  in  such  hot  neighbour- 
hood, close   by  '  a   reverberating  furnace   of    Fantasy  : ' 
have  we  not  here  the  components  of  driest  Gunpowder,  30 
ready,   on  occasion  of  the  smallest  spark,  to  blaze-up  I 
Neither,   in  this  our  Life-element,   are  sparks  anywhere 
wanting.     Without  doubt,  some  Angel,  whereof  so  many 
hovered  round,  would  one  day,  leaving  '  the  outskirts  of 


124  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

Esthetic  Tea,'  flit  nigher;  and  by  electric  Promethean 
glance,  kindle  no  despicable  firework.  Happy,  if  it  in- 
deed proved  a  Firework,  and  flamed-off  rocket-wise,  in 
successive  beautiful  bursts  of  splendour,  each  growing 
5  naturally  from  the  other,  through  the  several  stages  of  a 
happy  Youthful  Love  ;  till  the  whole  were  safely  burnt 
out  ;  and  the  young  soul  relieved,  with  little  damage  ! 
Happy,  if  it  did  not  rather  prove  a  Conflagration  and 
mad  Explosion  ;  painfully  lacerating  the  heart  itself ;  nay 

lo  perhaps  bursting  the  heart  in  pieces  (which  were  Death)  ; 
or  at  best,  bursting  the  thin  walls  of  your  '  reverberating 
furnace,'  so  that  it  rage  thenceforth  all  unchecked  among 
the  contiguous  combustibles  (which  were  Madness)  :  till 
of  the  so  fair  and  manifold  internal  world  of  our  Diog- 

15  enes,  there  remained  Nothing,  or  only  the  'crater  of  an 
extinct  volcano  !  * 

From  multifarious  Documents  in  this  Bag  Capricornus, 
and  in  the  adjacent  ones  on  both  sides  thereof,  it  becomes 
manifest  that  our  philosopher,  as  stoical  and  cynical  as 

20  he  now  looks,  was  heartily  and  even  frantically  in  Love ; 
here  therefore  may  our  old  doubts  whether  his  heart  were 
of  stone  or  of  flesh  give  way.  He  loved  once  ;  not 
wisely  but  too  well.  And  once  only  :  for  as  your  Con- 
greve  needs  a  new  case  or  wrappage  for  every  new  rocket, 

25  so  each  human  heart  can  properly  exhibit  but  one  Love, 
if  even  one;  the  'First  Love  which  is  infinite'  can  be 
followed  by  no  second  like  unto  it.  In  more  recent  years, 
accordingly,  the  Editor  of  these  Sheets  was  led  to  regard 
Teufelsdrockh    as    a    man    not   only    who    would    never 

30  wed,  but  who  would  never  even  flirt ;  whom  the  grand- 
climacteric  itself,  and  St.  Ma7'thi's  Sum7?ier  of  incipient 
Dotage,  would  crown  with  no  new  myrtle-garland. 
To  the  Professor,  women  are  henceforth  Pieces  of  Art ; 
of    Celestial    Art,    indeed  ;    which    celestial    pieces    he 


ROMANCE. 


125 


glories   to   survey  in  galleries,   but  has  lost  thought  of 
purchasing. 

Psychological  readers  are  not  without  curiosity  to  see 
how  Teufelsdrockh,  in  this  for  him  unexampled  predica- 
ment, demeans  himself  ;  with  what  specialties  of  succes-    5 
sive  configuration,  splendour    and    colour,  his  Firework 
blazes-off.     Small,  as  usual,  is  the  satisfaction  that  such 
can  meet  with  here.     From  amid  these  confused  masses 
of  Eulogy  and  Elegy,  with  their  mad  Petrarchan  and  Wer- 
terean  ware  lying  madly  scattered  among  all  sorts  of  quite  10 
extraneous  matter,  not  so  much  as  the  fair  one's  name 
can  be  deciphered.     For,  without  doubt,  the  title  BIii- 
77U)ie,  whereby  she  is  here  designated,  and  which  means 
simply  Goddess  of  Flowers,  must  be  fictitious.     Was  her 
real  name  Flora,  then?     But  what  was  her  surname,  or  15 
had  she  none  ?    Of  what  station  in  Life  was  she  ;  of  what 
parentage,  fortune,  aspect  ?     Specially,  by  what    Prees- 
tablished  Harmony  of  occurrences  did  the  Lover  and  tHe 
Loved  meet  one  another  in  so  wide  a  world  ;   how  did 
they  behave  in  such  meeting  ?     To  all  which  questions,  20 
not  unessential  in  a  Biographic  work,  mere  Conjecture 
must  for  most  part  return  answer.    '  It  was  appointed/  says 
our  Philosopher,  'that  the  high  celestial  orbit  of  Blumine 
should  intersect  the  low  sublunary  one  of  our  Forlorn  ; 
that  he,  looking  in  her  empyrean  eyes,  should  fancy  the  25 
upper  Sphere  of  Light  was  come  down  into  this  nether 
sphere  of  Shadows  ;  and  finding  himself  mistaken,  make 
noise  enough.' 
We   seem  to   gather   that   she  was  young,  hazel-eyed, 
beautiful,  and  some  one's  Cousin  ;  highborn  and  of  high  30 
spirits  ;  but  unhappily  dependent  and  insolvent  ;  living, 
perhaps,  on  the  not  too  gracious  bounty  of  moneyed  rela- 
tives.    But  how  came  '  the  Wanderer '    into  her  circle  ? 
Was  it  by  the  humid  vehicle  of  yEsthetic  Tea.,  or  by  the 


126  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

arid  one  of  mere  Business  ?  Was  it  on  the  hand  of  Herr 
Towgood  ;  or  of  the  Gniidige  Frau,  who,  as  an  ornamen- 
tal Artist,  might  sometimes  like  to  promote  flirtation, 
especially  for  young  cynical  Nondescripts?  To  all  ap- 
5  pearance,  it  was  chiefly  by  Accident,  and  the  grace  of 
Nature. 

'  Thou  fair  Waldschloss,'   writes  our  Autobiographer, 

'  what  stranger  ever  saw  thee,  were  it  even  an  absolved 

'  Auscultator,    officially   bearing   in   his    pocket    the    last 

lo  '  Relatio  ex  Actis  he  would  ever  write,  but   must    have 

*  paused  to  wonder  !     Noble  Mansion  !     There  stoodest 

*  thou,  in  deep  Mountain  Amphitheatre,  on  umbrageous 
'  lawns,  in  thy  serene  solitude  ;  stately,  massive,  all  of 
'  granite  ;  glittering  in  the  western  sunbeams,  like  a  palace 

15  'of  El  Dorado,  overlaid  with  precious  metal.  Beautiful 
'rose  up,  in  wavy  curvature,  the  slope  of  thy  guardian 
'  Hills  :  of  the  greenest  was  their  sward,  embossed  with 
'  its  dark-brown  frets  of  crag,  or  spotted  by  some  spread- 

*  ing  solitary  Tree  and  its  shadow.     To  the  unconscious 
20  '  Wayfarer  thou  wert  also  as  an  Ammon's  Temple,  in  the 

'  Libyan  Waste ;  where,  for  joy  and  woe,  the  tablet  of  his 
'  Destiny  lay  written.  Well  might  he  pause  and  gaze ; 
'  in  that  glance  of  his  were  prophecy  and  nameless  fore- 
'  bodings.' 

25  But  now  let  us  conjecture  that  the  so  presentient  Aus- 
cultator has  handed-in  his  Relatio  ex  Actis  ;  been  invited 
to  a  glass  of  Rhine-wine  ;  and  so,  instead  of  returning 
dispirited  and  athirst  to  his  dusty  Town-home,  is  ushered 
into  the  Gardenhouse,  where  sit  the   choicest    party  of 

30  dames  and  cavaliers  :  if  not  engaged  in  Esthetic  Tea, 
yet  in  trustful  evening  conversation,  and  perhaps  Musical 
Coffee,  for  we  hear  of  '  harps  and  pure  voices  making  the 
stillness  live.'  Scarcely,  it  would  seem,  is  the  Garden- 
house    inferior    in    respectability  to   the  noble   Mansion 


ROMANCE. 


127 


itself.  '  Embowered  amid  rich  foliage,  rose-clusters,  and 
the  hues  and  odours  of  thousand  flowers,  here  sat  that 
brave  company ;  in  front,  from  the  wide-opened  doors, 
fair  outlook  over  blossom  and  bush,  over  grove  and 
velvet  green,  stretching,  undulating  onwards  to  the  re-  5 
mote  Mountain  peaks  :  so  bright,  so  mild,  and  every- 
where the  melody  of  birds  and  happy  creatures  :  it  was 
all  as  if  man  had  stolen  a  shelter  from  the  Sun  in  the 
bosom-vesture  of  Summer  herself.  How  came  it  that  the 
Wanderer  advanced  thither  with  such  forecasting  heart  10 
(a/uidinigsvoH),  by  the  side  of  his  gay  host?  Did  he 
feel  that  to  these  soft  influences  his  hard  bosom  ought 
to  be  shut ;  that  here,  once  more.  Fate  had  it  in  view  to 
try  him ;  to  mock  him,  and  see  whether  there  were 
Humour  in  him?  15 

'  Next  moment  he  finds  himself  presented  to  the  party ; 
and  especially  by  name  to — Blumine  !  Peculiar  among 
all  dames  and  damosels,  glanced  Blumine,  there  in  her 
modesty,  like  a  star  among  earthly  lights.  Noblest 
maiden  !  whom  he  bent  to,  in  body  and  in  soul ;  yet  20 
scarcely  dared  look  at,  for  the  presence  filled  him  wdth 
painful  yet  sweetest  embarrassment. 

'  Blumine's  was  a  name  well  known  to  him  ;  far  and 
wide  was  the  fair  one  heard  of,  for  her  gifts,  her  graces, 
her  caprices  :  from  all  which  vague  colourings  of  Ru-  25 
mour,  from  the  censures  no  less  than  from  the  praises, 
had  our  Friend  painted  for  himself  a  certain  imperious 
Queen  of  Hearts,  and  blooming  warm  Earth-angel,  much 
more  enchanting  than  your  mere  white  Heaven-angels 
of  women,  in  whose  placid  veins  circulates  too  little  t^o 
naphtha-fire.  Herself  also  he  had  seen  in  public  places  ; 
that  light,  yet  so  stately  form ;  those  dark  tresses,  shad- 
ing a  face  where  smiles  and  sunlight  plaj^ed  over  earnest 
deeps  :  but  all  this  he  had  seen  only  as  a  magic  vision. 


128  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

for  him  inaccessible,  almost  without  reality.  Her  sphere 
was  too  far  from  his  ;  how  should  she  ever  think  of 
him ;  O  Heaven  !  how  should  they  so  much  as  once 
meet  together?  And  now  that  Rose-goddess  sits  in  the 
same  circle  with  him  ;  the  light  of  her  eyes  has  smiled 
on  him ;  if  he  speak,  she  will  hear  it !  Nay,  who  knows, 
since  the  heavenly  Sun  looks  into  lowest  valleys,  but 
Blumine  herself,  might  have  aforetime  noted  the  so 
unnotable ;  perhaps  from  his  very  gainsayers,  as  he  had 
from  hers,  gathered  wonder,  gathered  favour  for  him? 
Was  the  attraction,  the  agitation  mutual,  then ;  pole  and 
pole  trembling  towards  contact,  when  once  brought  into 
neighbourhood?  Say  rather,  heart  swelling  in  presence 
of  the  Queen  of  Hearts ;  like  the  Sea  swelling  when 
once  near  its  Moon  !  With  the  Wanderer  it  was  even 
so :  as  in  heavenward  gravitation,  suddenly  as  at  the 
touch  of  a  Seraph's  wand,  his  whole  soul  is  roused  from 
its  deepest  recesses  ;  and  all  that  was  painful  and  that 
was  blissful  there,  dim  images,  vague  feelings  of  a  whole 
Past  and  a  whole  Future,  are  heaving  in  unquiet  eddies 
within  him. 

'Often,  in  far  less  agitating  scenes,  had  our  still  Friend 
shrunk  forcibly  together  ;  and  shrouded-up  his  tremors 
and  flutterings,  of  what  sort  soever,  in  a  safe  cover  of 
Silence,  and  perhaps  of  seeming  Stolidity.  How  was  it, 
then,  that  here,  when  trembling  to  the  core  of  his  heart, 
he  did  not  sink  into  swoons,  but  rose  into  strength,  into 
fearlessness  and  clearness  ?  It  was  his  guiding  Genius 
{Daj?wn)  that  inspired  him  ;  he  must  go  forth  and  meet 
his  Destiny.  Show  thyself  now,  whispered  it,  or  be  for- 
ever hid.  Thus  sometimes  it  is  even  when  your  anxiety 
becomes  transcendental,  that  the  soul  first  feels  herself 
able  to  transcend  it  ;  that  she  rises  above  it,  in  fiery 
victory  ;    and   borne    on    new-found    wings    of    victory. 


ROMANCE. 


129 


'  moves  so  calmly,  even  because  so  rapidly,  so  irresistibly. 
'  Always  must  the  Wanderer  remember,  with  a  certain 
'  satisfaction  and  surprise,  how  in  this  case  he  sat  not 
'  silent,  but  struck  adroitly  into  the  stream  of  conversa- 
'  tion  ;  which  thenceforth,  to  speak  with  an  apparent  not  5 
'  a  real  vanity,  he  may  say  that  he  continued  to  lead. 
'  Surely,  in  those  hours,  a  certain  inspiration  was  im- 
'  parted  him,  such  inspiration  as  is  still  possible  in  our 
'  late  era.  The  self-secluded  unfolds  himself  in  noble 
'  thoughts,  in  free,  glowing  words  ;  his  soul  is  as  one  sea  10 
'  of  light,  the  peculiar  home  of  Truth  and  Intellect ; 
'  wherein  also  Fantasy  bodies-forth  form  after  form,  radi- 
'  ant  with  all  prismatic  hues.' 

It  appears,  in  this  otherwise  so  happy  meeting,  there 
talked  one  'Philistine;'  who  even  now,  to  the  general  15 
weariness,    was    dominantly    pouring-forth    Philistinism 
{Philistriositdteii)  ;  little  witting  what  hero  was  here  en- 
tering to  demolish  him  !     We  omit  the  series  of  Socratic, 
or  other  Biogenic  utterances,  not  unhappy  in  their  way, 
whereby  the  monster,   '  persuaded    into   silence,'   seems  20 
soon  after  to  have  withdrawn  for  the  night.     '  Of  which 
dialectic  marauder,'  writes  our  hero,  '  the  discomfiture 
was  visibly  felt  as  a  benefit  by  most  :  but  what  were  all 
applauses  to  the  glad  smile,  threatening  every  moment 
to  become  a  laugh,  wherewith  Blumine  herself  repaid  25 
the  victor  ?     He  ventured  to  address  her,  she  answered 
with  attention  :  nay,  what  if  there  were  a  slight  tremor 
in  that  silver  voice  ;  what  if  the  red  glow  of  evening 
were  hiding  a  transient  blush  ! 

'  The  conversation  took  a  higher  tone,  one  fine  thought  30 
called  forth  another  :  it  was  one  of  those  rare  seasons, 
when  the  soul  expands  with  full  freedom,  and  man  feels 
himself  brought  near  to  man.     Gaily  in  light,  graceful 
abandonment,  the  friendly  talk  played  round  that  circle ; 


I30 


SA  /^  TO  A'   RES  A  R  TUS. 


for  the  burden  was  rolled  from  every  heart  ;  the  barriers 

of  Ceremony,  which  are  indeed  the  laws  of  polite  living, 

had  melted  as  into  vapour ;  and  the  poor  claims  of  Me 

'  and  TJice^  no  longer  parted  by  rigid  fences,  now  flowed 

5  '  softly  into  one  another ;  and  Life  lay  all  harmonious, 
'  many-tinted,  like  some  fair  royal  champaign,  the  sover- 
'  eign  and  owner  of  which  were  Love  only.  Such  music 
'  springs  from  kind  hearts,  in  a  kind  environment  of 
'  place  and  time.     And  yet  as  the  light  grew  more  aerial 

lo  '  on  the  mountain-tops,  and  the  shadows  fell  longer  over 
'  the  valley,  some  faint  tone  of  sadness  may  have  breathed 
*  through  the  heart  ;  and,  in  whispers  more  or  less  audi- 
'  ble,  reminded  every  one  that  as  this  bright  day  was 
'  drawing  towards  its  close,  so  likewise  must  the  Day  of 

15  'Man's  Existence  decline  into  dusk  and  darkness  ;  and 
'with  all  its  sick  toilings,  and  joyful  and  mournful  noises, 
'  sink  in  the  still  Eternity. 

'  To  our  Friend  the  hours  seemed  moments  ;  holy  was 
'  he  and  happy  :  the  words  from  those  sweetest  lips  came 

20  '  over  him  like  dew  on  thirsty  grass  ;  all  better  feelings 
'  in  his  soul  seemed  to  whisper.  It  is  good  for  us  to  be 
'  here.  At  parting,  the  Blumine's  hand  was  in  his  :  in 
'the  balmy  twilight,  with  the  kind  stars  above  them,  he 
'  spoke  something  of  meeting  again,  which  was  not  con- 

25  '  tradicted ;  he  pressed  gently  those  small  soft  fingers, 
'  and  it  seemed  as  if  they  were  not  hastily,  not  angrily 
'  withdrawn.' 

Poor  Teufelsdrockh  !  it  is  clear  to  demonstration  thou 
art   smit :    the  Queen   of  Hearts   would  see  a  '  man    of 

30  genius '  also  sigh  for  her  ;  and  there,  by  art-magic,  in 
that  preternatural  hour,  has  she  bound  and  spell-bound 
thee.  '  Love  is  not  altogether  a  Delirium,'  says  he  else- 
where ;  '  yet  has  it  many  points  in  common  therewith.  I 
'  call  it  rather  a  discernino:  of  the  Infinite  in  the  Finite,  of 


ROMANCE.  131 

the  Idea  made  Real  ;  which  discerning  again  may  be 
either  true  or  false,  either  seraphic  or  demoniac,  Inspira- 
tion or  Insanity.  But  in  the  former  case  too,  as  in  com- 
mon Madness,  it  is  Fantasy  that  superadds  itself  to 
sight  ;  on  the  so  petty  domain  of  the  Actual  plants  its  5 
Archimedes-lever,  whereby  to  move  at  will  the  infinite 
Spiritual.  Fantasy  I  might  call  the  true  Heaven-gate 
and  Hell-gate  of  man  :  his  sensuous  life  is  but  the  small 
temporary  stage  (ZciibuJuie)^  whereon  thick-streaming  in- 
fluences from  both  these  far  yet  near  regions  meet  visi-  10 
bly,  and  act  tragedy  and  melodrama.  Sense  can  support 
herself  handsomely,  in  most  countries,  for  some  eighteen- 
pence  a  day ;  but  for  Fantasy  planets  and  solar-systems 
will  not  suffice.  Witness  your  Pyrrhus  conquering  the 
world,  yet  drinking  no  better  red  wine  than  he  had  be-  15 
fore.'  Alas !  witness  also  your  Diogenes,  flame-clad, 
scaling  the  upper  Heaven,  and  verging  towards  Insanity, 
for  prize  of  a  '  high-souled  Brunette,'  as  if  the  Earth  held 
but  one  and  not  several  of  these  ! 

He   says  that,  in  Town,  they  met  again  :   '  day  after  20 
'  day,  like  his  heart's  sun,  the  blooming  Blumine  shone 
'  on  him.     Ah !  a  little  while  ago,  and  he  was  yet  in  all 
'  darkness  :  him  what  Graceful  (^Holde)  would  ever  love  ? 
'  Disbelieving  all  things,  the  poor  youth  had  never  learned 
'  to  believe  in  himself.     Withdrawn,   in   proud    timidity,  25 
*  within  his  own  fastnesses  ;   solitary  from  men,  yet  baited 
*by  night-spectres  enough,   he  saw  himself,  with  a  sad 
'  indignation,  constrained   to  renounce  the  fairest  hopes 
'  of  existence.     And  now,  O  now  !     "  She  looks  on  thee," 
'  cried  he  ;  ''  she  the  fairest,  noblest ;  do  not  her  dark  eyes  30 
'tell  thee,  thou  art  not  despised.?     The   Heaven's-Mes- 
'senger!       All    Heaven's    blessings    be    hers!"      Thus 
'  did  soft  melodies  flow  through  his  heart ;  tones  of  an 
'infinite    gratitude;    sweetest    intimations    that    he    also 


1^2  SAA'TOA'   RESARTUS. 

'  was  a  man,   that    for    him    also    unutterable    joys    had 
'been  provided. 

'  In  free  speech,  earnest  or  gay,  amid  lambent  glances, 
'  laughter,  tears,  and  often  with  the  inarticulate  mystic 
5  '  speech  of  Music  ;  such  was  the  element  they  now  lived 
'  in ;  in  such  a  many-tinted,  radiant  Aurora,  and  by  this 
'fairest  of  Orient  Light-bringers  must  our  Friend  be 
'  blandished,  and  the  new  Apocalypse  of  Nature  unrolled 
'  to   him.     Fairest   Blumine  !     And,    even    as  a   Star,  all 

lo  '  Fire  and  humid  Softness,  a  very  Light-ray  incarnate ! 
'  Was  there  so  much  as  a  fault,  a  '*  caprice,"  he  could 
'  have  dispensed  with  ?  Was  she  not  to  him  in  very  deed 
'  a  Morning-Star ;  did  not  her  presence  bring  with  it  airs 
'from  Heaven?     As  from  ^olian  Harps  in  the  breath 

15  'of  dawn,  as  from  the  Memruon's  Statue  struck  by  the 
'  rosy  finger  of  Aurora,  unearthly  music  was  around  him, 
'  and  lapped  him  into  untried  balmy  Rest.  Pale  Doubt 
'  fled  away  to  the  distance  ;  Life  bloomed-up  with  happi- 
'ness    and    hope.      The    past,  then,  was  all    a    haggard 

20  '  dream  ;  he  had  been  in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  then,  and 
'  could  not  discern  it !  But  lo  now !  the  black  walls  of 
'  his  prison  melt  away  ;  the  captive  is  alive,  is  free.  If 
'he  loved  his  Disenchantress .?  Ach  Gott!  His  whole 
■heart  and  soul  and  life   were  hers,  but  riever^had  he 

25  '  named  it  Love  :  existence  was  all  a  Feeling,  not  yet 
'  shaped  into  a  Thought.' 

Nevertheless,  into  a  Thought,  nay  into  an  Action,  it 
must  be  shaped  ;  for  neither  Disenchanter  nor  Disen- 
chantress,  mere  '  Children  of  Time,'  can  abide  by  Feeling 

3o~  alone.  The  Professor  knows  not,  to  this  day,  '  how  in 
'  her  soft,  fervid  bosom,  the  Lovely  found  determination, 
'  even  on  hest  of  Necessity,  to  cut-asunder  these  so 
'blissful  bonds.'  He  even  appears  surprised  at  the 
'  Duenna  Cousin,'  whoever  she  may  have  been,  'in  whose 


ROMANCE. 


^?>Z 


'  meagre,  hunger-bitten  philosophy,  the  rehgion  of  young 
'  hearts  was,  from  the  first,  faintly  approved  of.'  We, 
even  at  such  distance,  can  explain  it  without  necromancy. 
Let  the  Philosopher  answer  this  one  question  :  What 
figure,  at  that  period,  was  a  Mrs.  Teufelsdrockh  likely  to  5 
make  in  polished  society.''  Could  she  have  driven  so 
much  as  a  brass-bound  Gig,  or  even  a  simple  iron-spring 
one  ?  Thou  foolish  '  absolved  Auscultator,'  before  whom 
lies  no  prospect  of  capital,  will  any  yet  known  '  religion 
of  young  hearts'  keep  the  human  kitchen  warm .?  Pshaw!  10 
thy  divine  Blumine,  when  she  '  resigned  herself  to  wed 
some  richer,'  shows  more  philosophy,  though  but  'a 
woman  of  genius,'  than  thou,  a  pretended  man. 

Our  readers  have  witnessed  the  origin  of  this  Love- 
mania,  and  with  what  royal  splendour  it  waxes,  and  rises.  15 
Let  no  one  ask  us  to  unfold  the  glories  of  its  dominant 
state ;  much  less  the  horrors  of  its  almost  instantaneous 
dissolution.  How  from  such  inorganic  masses,  hence- 
forth madder  than  ever,  as  lie  in  these  Bags,  can  even 
fragments  of  a  living  delineation  be  organised  ?  Besides,  20 
of  what  profit  were  it?  We  view,  with  a  lively  pleasure, 
the  gay  silk  Montgolfier  start  from  the  ground,  and  shoot 
upwards,  cleaving  the  liquid  deeps,  till  it  dwindle  to  a 
luminous  star :  but  what  is  there  to  look  longer  on,  when 
once,  by  natural  elasticity,  or  accident  of  fire,  it  has  ex-  25 
ploded.?  A  hapless  air-navigator,  plunging,  amid  torn 
parachutes,  sand-bags,  and  confused  wreck,  fast  enough 
into  the  jaws  of  the  Devil !  Suffice  it  to  know  that  Teu- 
felsdrockh rose  into  the  highest  regions  of  the  Empyrean, 
by  a  natural  parabolic  track,  and  returned  thence  in  a  30 
quick  perpendicular  one.  For  the  rest,  let  any  feeling 
reader,  who  has  been  unhappy  enough  to  do  the  like, 
paint  it  out  for  himself  :  considering  only  that  if  he,  for 
his  perhaps  comparatively  insignificant  mistress,  under- 


34 


SA  A'  TO  A'    RES  A  R  TUS. 


20 


went  such  agonies  and  frenzies,  what  must  Teufelsdrockh's 
have  been,  with  a  fire-heart,  and  for  a  nonpareil  Blumine ! 
We  glance  merely  at  the  final  scene  : 

'  One  morning,  he  found  his  Morning-star  all  dimmed 
and  dusky-red  ;  the  fair  creature  was  silent,  absent,  she 
seemed  to  have  been  weeping.  Alas,  no  longer  a  Morn- 
ing-star, but  a  troublous  skyey  Portent,  announcing  that 
the  Doomsday  had  dawned  !  She  said,  in  a  tremulous 
voice.  They  were  to  meet  no  more.'  The  thunderstruck 
0  Air-sailor  is  not  wanting  to  himself  in  this  dread  hour : 
but  what  avails  it.'*  We  omit  the  passionate  expostula- 
tions, entreaties,  indignations,  since  all  was  vain,  and  not 
even  an  explanation  was  conceded  him  ;  and  hasten  to 
the  catastrophe.  '"Farewell,  then.  Madam!"  said  he, 
5  '  not  without  sternness,  for  his  stung  pride  helped  him. 
'  She  put  her  hand  in  his,  she  looked  in  his  face,  tears 
'  started  to  her  eyes  :  in  wild  audacity  he  clasped  her  to 

*  his  bosom ;  their  lips  were  joined,  their  two  souls,  like 
*two  dew-drops,  rushed  into  one, — for  the  first  time,  and 
'  for  the  last ! '  Thus  was  Teufelsdrockh  made  immortal 
by  a  kiss.     And  then  .'*     Why,  then  — '  thick  curtains  of 

*  Night  rushed  over  his  soul,  as  rose  the  immeasurable 

*  Crash  of  Doom ;  and  through  the  ruins  as  of  a  shivered 
'  Universe  was  he  falling,  falling,  towards  the  Abyss.' 


CHAPTER  VI. 


SORROWS    OF    TEUFELSDROCKH. 


25  We  have  long  felt  that,  with  a  man  like  our  Professor, 
matters  must  often  be  expected  to  take  a  course  of  their 
own  ;  that  in  so  multiplex,  intricate  a  nature,  there  might 


SORROIVS   OF   TEUFELSDROCKH. 


35 


be  channels,  both  for  admitting  and  emitting,  such  as  the 
Psychologist  had  seldom  noted ;  in  short,  that  on  no  grand 
occasion  and  convulsion,  neither  in  the  joy-storm  nor  in 
the  woe-storm,  could  you  predict  his  demeanour. 

To  our  less  philosophical  readers,  for  example,  it  is  now  5 
clear  that  the  so  passionate  Teufelsdrockh,  precipitated 
through  '  a  shivered  Universe '  in  this  extraordinary  way, 
has  only  one  of  three  things  which  he  can  next  do  :  Estab- 
lish himself  in  Bedlam  ;  begin  writing  Satanic  Poetry ;  or 
blow-out  his  brains.  In  the  progress  towards  atly  of  10 
which  consummations,  do  not  such  readers  anticipate  ex- 
travagance enough;  breast-beating,  brow-beating  (against 
walls),  lion-bellowings  of  blasphemy  and  the  like,  stamp- 
ings, smitings,  breakages  of  furniture,  if  not  arson  itself  ? 

Nowise  so  does  Teufelsdrockh  deport  him.     He  quietly  15 
lifts   his  Pilgerstab   (Pilgrim-staff),   'old    business    being ^ 
'  soon  wound-up';  and  begins  a  perambulation  and  cir- 
cumambulation  of  the  terraqueous  Globe  !     Curious  it  is, 
indeed,  how  with  such  vivacity  of  conception,  such  inten- 
sity of  feeling  ;  above  all,  with  these  unconscionable  habits  20 
of  Exaggeration  in  speech,  he  combines  that  wonderful 
stillness  of  his,  that  stoicism  in  external  procedure.    Thus, 
if  his  sudden  bereavement,  in  this  matter  of  the  Flower- 
goddess,  is  talked  of  as  a  real  Doomsday  and  Dissolution 
of  Nature,  in  which  light  doubtless  it  partly  appeared  to  25 
himself,  his  own  nature  is  nowise  dissolved  thereby ;  but 
rather  is  compressed  closer.     For  once,  as  we  might  say, 
a  Blumine  by  magic  appliances  has  unlocked  that  shut 
heart  of  his,  and  its  hidden  things  rush-out  tumultuous, 
boundless,  like  genii  enfranchised  from  their  glass  phial:  30 
but  no  sooner  are  your  magic  appliances  withdrawn,  than 
the  strange  casket  of  a  heart  springs-to  again ;  and  per- 
haps there  is  now  no  key  extant  that  will  open  it ;  for  a 
Teufelsdrockh,  as  we  remarked,  will  not  love  a  second 


136  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

time.  Singular  Diogenes  !  No  sooner  has  that  heart- 
rending occurrence  fairly  taken  place,  than  he  affects  to 
regard  it  as  a  thing  natural,  of  which  there  is  nothing 
more  to  be  said.  '  One  highest  hope,  seemingly  legible 
5  '  in  the  eyes  of  an  Angel,  had  recalled  him  as  out  of 
'  Death-shadows  into  celestial  life  :  but  a  gleam  of  Tophet 
*  passed  over  the  face  of  his  Angel ;  he  was  rapt  away  in 
'  whirlwinds,  and  heard  the  laughter  of  Demons.  It  was 
'  a  Calenture,'  adds  he,  '  whereby  the  Youth  saw  green 

10  '  Paradise-groves  in  the  waste  Ocean-waters:  a  lying  vision, 
'  yet  not  wholly  a  lie,  for  he  saw  it.'  But  what  things  so- 
ever passed  in  him,  when  he  ceased  to  see  it ;  what  rag- 
ings  and  despairings  soever  Teufelsdrockh's  soul  was  the 
scene  of,  he  has  the  goodness  to  conceal  under  a  quite 

15  opaque  cover  of  Silence.  We  know  it  well ;  the  first  mad 
paroxysm  past,  our  brave  Gneschen  collected  his  dis- 
membered philosophies,  and  buttoned  himself  together ; 
he  was  meek,  silent,  or  spoke  ot  the  weather  and  the 
Journals :  only  by  a  transient  knitting  of  those  shaggy 

20  brows,  by  some  deep  flash  of  those  eyes,  glancing  one 
knew  not  whether  with  tear-dew  or  with  fierce  fire, — 
might  you  have  guessed  what  a  Gehenna  was  within  ; 
that  a  whole  Satanic  School  were  spouting,  though  inaud- 
ibly,  there.     To  consume  your  own  choler,  as  some  chim- 

25  neys  consume  their  own  smoke ;  to  keep  a  whole  Satanic 
School  spouting,  if  it  must  spout,  inaudibly,  is  a  nega- 
tive yet  no  slight  virtue,  nor  one  of  the  commonest  in 
these  times. 

Nevertheless,  we  will  not  take  upon  us  to  say,  that  in 

30  the  strange  measure  he  fell  upon,  there  was  not  a  touch 
of  latent  Insanity ;  whereof  indeed  the  actual  condition 
of  these  Documents  in  Capricor?ius  and  Aquarius  is  no 
bad  emblem.  His  so  unlimited  Wanderings,  toilsome 
enough,  are  without  assigned  or  perhaps  assignable  aim  ; 


SORROWS   OF   TEUFELSDROCKH. 


137 


internal  Unrest  seems  his  sole  guidance ;    he  wanders, 
wanders,  as  if  that  curse  of  the  Prophet  had  fallen  on 
him,  and  he  were  '  made  like  unto  a  wheel.'     Doubtless, 
too,  the  chaotic  nature  of  these  Paper-bags  aggravates  our 
obscurity.     Quite   without   note   of  preparation,   for  ex-    5 
ample,   we  come  upon  the   following    slip :  '  A  peculiar 
feeling  it  is  that  will  rise  in  the  Traveller,  when  turning 
some  hill-range  in  his  desert  road,  he  descries  lying  far 
below,  embosomed  among  its  groves  and  green  natural 
bulwarks,  and  all  diminished  to  a  toybox,  the  fair  Town,  10 
where   so  many  souls,  as  it  were  seen  and  yet  unseen, 
are  driving  their  multifarious  trafhc.     Its  white  steeple 
is  then  truly  a  starward-pointing  finger ;  the  canopy  of 
blue  smoke  seems  like  a  sort  of  Life-breath :  for  always, 
of  its  own  unity,  the  soul  gives  unity  to  whatsoever  it  looks  15 
on  with  love  ;  thus  does  the  little  Dwellingplace  of  men, 
in  itself  a  congeries  of  houses  and  huts,  become  for  us 
an   individual,    almost   a   person.     But   what   thousand 
other  thoughts  unite  thereto,  if  the   place  has  to  our- 
selves been  the  arena  of  joyous  or  mournful  experiences  ;  20 
if  perhaps   the   cradle  we  were  rocked  in  still   stands 
there,  if  our  Loving  ones  still  dwell  there,  if  our  Buried 
ones    there    slumber ! '       Does    Teufelsdrockh,    as    the 
wounded  eagle  is  said  to  make    for  its  own  eyrie,  and 
indeed  military  deserters,  and  all  hunted  outcast  creatures,  25 
turn  as  if  by  instinct  in  the  direction  of  their  birth-land,  — 
fly  first,  in  this  extremity,  towards  his  native  Entepfuhl ; 
but  reflecting  that  there  no  help  awaits  him,  takes  but 
one  wistful  look  from  the  distance,  and  then  wend  else- 
whither ?  30 

Little  happier  seems  to  be  his  next  flight  :  into  the 
wilds  of  Nature ;  as  if  in  her  mother-bosom  he  would 
seek  healing.  So  at  least  we  incline  to  interpret  the  fol- 
lowing   Notice,    separated    from    the    former    by   some 


138  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

considerable   space,   wherein,   however,  is  nothing  note- 
worthy : 

'  Mountains  were  not  new  to  him  ;  but  rarely  are  Moun- 
tains seen  in  such  combined  majesty  and  grace  as  here. 
The  rocks  are  of  that  sort  called  Primitive  by  the  miner- 
alogists, which  always  arrange  themselves  in  masses  of 
a  rugged,  gigantic  character ;  which  ruggedness,  how- 
ever, is  here  tempered  by  a  singular  airiness  of  form, 
and  softness  of  environment :  in  a  climate  favourable  to 
vegetation,  the  gray  cliff,  itself  covered  with  lichens, 
shoots-up  through  a  garment  of  foliage  or  verdure ;  and 
white,  bright  cottages,  tree-shaded,  cluster  round  the 
everlasting  granite.  In  fine  vicissitude,  Beauty  alter- 
nates with  Grandeur :  you  ride  through  stony  hollows, 
along  strait  passes,  traversed  by  torrents,  overhung  by 
high  walls  of  rock ;  now  winding  amid  broken  shaggy 
chasms,  and  huge  fragments ;  now  suddenly  emerging 
into  some  emerald  valley,  where  the  streamlet  collects 
itself  into  a  Lake,  and  man  has  again  found  a  fair  dwell- 
ing, and  it  seems  as  if  Peace  had  established  herself  in 
the  bosom  of  Strength. 

'To  Peace,  however,  in  this  vortex  of  existence,  can 
the  Son  of  Time  not  pretend  :  still  less  if  some  Spectre 
haunt  him  from  the  Past ;  and  the  Future  is  wholly  a 
Stygian  darkness,  spectre-bearing.  Reasonably  might 
the  Wanderer  exclaim  to  himself :  Are  not  the  gates  of 
this  world's  Happiness  inexorably  shut  against  thee ; 
hast  thou  a  hope  that  is  not  mad  ?  Nevertheless,  one 
may  still  murmur  audibly,  or  in  the  original  Greek 
if  that  suit  thee  better :  "Whoso  can  look  on  Death  will 
start  at  no  shadows." 

'  From  such  meditations  is  the  Wanderer's  attention 
called  outwards ;  for  now  the  Valley  closes-in  abruptly, 
intersected  by  a  huge  mountain  mass,  the  stony  water- 


SORROWS   OF   TEUFELSDROCKH.  139 

worn  ascent  of  which  is  not  to  be  accompHshed  on  horse- 
back.    Arrived  aloft,  he  finds  himself  again  lifted  into 
the  evening  sunset  light;  and  cannot  but  pause,   and 
gaze  round  him,  some  moments  there.     An  upland  ir- 
regular expanse  of  wold,  where  valleys  in  complex  branch-    5 
ings   are   suddenly   or   slowly    arranging   their    descent 
towards  every  quarter  of  the  sky.     The  mountain-ranges 
are  beneath   your  feet,  and  folded  together :  only  the 
loftier  summits  look  down  here  and  there  as  on  a  second 
plain ;  lakes  also  lie  clear  and  earnest  in  their  solitude.  10 
No  trace  of  man  now  visible  ;  unless  indeed  it  were  he 
who  fashioned  that  little  visible  link  of  Highway,  here,  as 
would  seem,  scaling  the  inaccessible,  to  unite  Province 
with  Province.     But   sunwards,  lo  you !    how  it  towers 
sheer  up,  a  world  of  Mountains,  the  diadem  and  centre  1 5 
of  the  mountain  region  !     A  hundred  and  a  hundred  sav- 
age peaks,  in  the  last  light  of  Day ;  all  glowing,  of  gold 
and  amethyst,  like  giant  spirits  of  the  wilderness ;  there 
in  their  silence,  in  their  solitude,  even  as  on  the  night 
when  Noah's  Deluge  first  dried !     Beautiful,  nay  solemn,  20 
was  the  sudden   aspect  to   our  Wanderer.     He   gazed 
over  those  stupendous  masses  with  wonder,  almost  with 
longing  desire  ;  never  till  this  hour  had  he  known  j^a- 1 
ture,  that  she  was  One,  that  she  was  his  Mother  and 
divine.     And  as  the  ruddy  glow  was  fading  into  clear-  25 
ness  in  the  sky,  and  the  Sun  had  now  departed,  a  mur- 
mur of  Eternity  and  Immensity,  of  Death  and  of  Life, 
stole  through  his  soul ;  and  he  felt  as  if  Death  and  Life 
were  one,  as  if  the  Earth  were  not  dead,  as  if  the  Spirit 
of  the  Earth  had  its  throne  in  that  splendour,  and  his  30 
own  spirit  were  therewith  holding  communion. 

'  The  spell  was  broken  by  a  sound  of  carriage-wheels. 
Emerging  from  the  hidden  Northward,  to  sink  soon  into 
the  hidden  Southward,   came  a  gay  Barouche-and-four : 


40 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


*  it  was   open  ;    servants   and   postillions  wore  wedding- 

*  favours:  that  happy  pair,  then,  had  found  each  other,  it 
'  was  their  marriage  evening !  Few  moments  brought 
'them  near:  Du  Hwt77iel !  It  was  Herr  Towgood  and 
' Blumine !     With  slight    unrecognising    salutation 


'  they  passed  me ;  plunged  down  amid  the  neighbouring 
'  thickets,  onwards,  to  Heaven,  and  to  England ;  and  I, 
'  in  my  friend  Richter's  words,  /  remained  alone,  behind 
'  them,  luith  the  Night: 
10  Were  it  not  cruel  in  these  circumstances,  here  might 
be  the  place  to  insert  an  observation,  gleaned  long  ago 
from  the  great  Clothes-  Voliwie,  where  it  stands  with  quite 
'    other  intent :     '  Some  time  before   Small-pox   was   extir- 

*  pated,'  says  the  Professor,  '  there  came  a  new  malady  of 
1 5  '  the  spiritual  sort  on  Europe  :    I  mean  the  epidemic,  now 

'  endemical,  of  View-hunting.  Poets  of  old  date,  being 
'privileged  with  Senses,  had  also  enjoyed  external 
'  Nature ;  but  chiefly  as  we  enjoy  the  crystal  cup  which 
'  holds  good  or  bad  liquor  for  us ;  that  is  to  say,  in 
20  '  silence,  or  with  slight  incidental  commentary :  never,  as 
'  I  compute,  till  after  the  Sorrows  of  Werter,  was  there 
'  man  found  who  would  say :    Come  let  us  make  a  De- 

*  scription  !    Having  drunk  the  liquor,  come  let  us  eat  the 
'  glass  !    Of  which  endemic  the  Jenner  is  unhappily  still 

25  '  to  seek.'     Too  true  ! 

We  reckon  it  more  important  to  remark  that  the  Pro- 
fessor's Wanderings,  so  far  as  his  stoical  and  cynical  en- 
velopment admits  us  to  clear  insight,  here  first  take  their 
permanent    character,   fatuous    or    not.      That    Basilisk- 

30  glance  of  the  Barouche-and-four  seems  to  have  withered- 
up  what  little  remnant  of  a  purpose  may  have  still  lurked 
in  him :  Life  has  become  wholly  a  dark  labyrinth ; 
wherein,  through  long  years,  our  Friend,  flying  from 
spectres,  has  to  stumble  about  at  random,  and  naturally 

35  with  more  haste  than  progress. 


SORROWS   OF   TEUFELSDROCKH.  141 

Foolish  were  it  in  us  to  attempt  following  him,  even 
from  afar,  in  this  extraordinary  world-pilgrimage  of  his ; 
the  simplest  record  of  which,  were  clear  record  possible, 
would  fill  volumes.  Hopeless  is  the  obscurity,  unspeak- 
able the  confusion.  He  glides  from  country  to  country,  5 
from  condition  to  condition  ;  vanishing  and  re-appearing, 
no  man  can  calculate  how  or  where.  Through  all  quar- 
ters of  the  world  he  wanders,  and  apparently  through  all 
circles  of  society.  If  in  any  scene,  perhaps  difficult  to 
fix  geographically,  he  settles  for  a  time,  and  forms  con-  10 
nexions,  be  sure  he  will  snap  them  abruptly  asunder. 
Let  him  sink  out  of  sight  as  Private  Scholar  {Frivatisi- 
refider),  living  by  the  grace  of  God,  in  some  European 
capital,  you  may  next  find  him  as  Hadjee  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Mecca.  It  is  an  inexplicable  Phantasma-  15 
goria,  capricious,  quick-changing  ;  as  if  our  Traveller,  in- 
stead of  limbs  and  highways,  had  transported  himself  by 
some  wishing-carpet,  or  Fortunatus'  Hat.  The  whole, 
too,  imparted  emblematically,  in  dim  multifarious  tokens 
(as  that  collection  of  Street- Advertisements) ;  with  only  20 
some  touch  of  direct  historical  notice  sparingly  inter- 
spersed :  little  light-islets  in  the  world  of  haze  !  So  that, 
from  this  point,  the  Professor  is  more  of  an  enigma  than 
ever.  In  figurative  language,  we  might  say  he  becomes, 
not  indeed  a  spirit,  yet  spiritualised,  vaporised.  Fact  25 
unparalleled  in  Biography :  The  ^river  of  his  His'tory, 
which  we  have  traced  from  its  tiniest  fountains,  and 
hoped  to  see  flow  onward,  with  increasing  current,  into 
the  ocean,  here  dashes  itself  over  that  terrific  Lover's 
Leap  ;  and,  as  a  mad-foaming  cataract,  flies  wholly  into  30 
tumultuous  clouds  of  spray !  Low  down  it  indeed  col- 
lects again  into  pools  and  plashes  ;  yet  only  at  a  great 
distance,  and  with  difficulty,  if  at  all,  into  a  general 
stream.     To  cast  a  glance  into  certain  of  those  pools  and 


142  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

plashes,  and  trace  whither  they  run,  must,  for  a  chapter  or 
two,  form  the  limit  of  our  endeavour. 

For  which  end  doubtless  those  direct  historical  No- 
tices, where  they  can  be  met  with,  are  the  best.  Never- 
5  theless,  of  this  sort  too  there  occurs  much,  which,  with 
our  present  light,  it  were  questionable  to  emit.  Teufels- 
drockh,  vibrating  everywhere  between  the  highest  and 
the  lowest  levels,  comes  into  contact  with  public  History 
itself.     For  example,  those  conversations  and   relations 

10  with  illustrious  Persons,  as  Sultan  Mahmoud,  the  Em- 
peror Napoleon,  and  others,  are  they  not  as  yet  rather 
of  a  diplomatic  character  than  of  a  biographic  ?  The 
Editor,  appreciating  the  sacredness  of  crowned  heads, 
nay    perhaps    suspecting    the    possible    trickeries    of    a 

15  Clothes-Philosopher,  will  eschew  this  province  for  the 
present  ;  a  new  time  may  bring  new  insight  and  a  differ- 
ent duty. 

If  -we  ask  now,  not  indeed  with  what  ulterior  Purpose, 
for  there  was  none,  yet  with  what  immediate  outlooks  ; 

20  at  all  events,  in  what  mood  of  mind,  the  Professor  under- 
took and  prosecuted  this  world-pilgrimage,  —  the  answer 
is  more  distinct  than  favourable.  *A  nameless  Unrest,' 
says  he,  '  urged  me  forward ;  to  which  the  outward  mo- 
'  tion  was  some  momentary  lying  solace.     Whither  should 

25  '  I  go  ?  My  Loadstars  were  blotted  out ;  in  that  canopy  of 
'  grim  fire  shone  no  star.  Yet  forward  must  I ;  the  ground 
'  burnt  under  me  ;  there  was  no  rest  for  the  sole  of  my 
'  foot.  I  was  alone,  alone  !  Ever  too  the  strong  inward 
'  longing  shaped  Fantasms  for  itself :   towards  these,  one 

30  '  after  the  other,  must  I  fruitlessly  wander.  A  feeUng  I 
'had,  that  for  my  fever-thirst  there  was  and  must  be 
*  somewhere  a  healing  Fountain.  To  many  fondly  im- 
'  agined  Fountains,  the  Saints'  Wells  of  these  days,  did  I 
'  pilgrim  ;  to  great  Men,  to  great  Cities,  to  great  Events  : 


SORROWS   OF   TEUFELSDROCKH. 


143 


'  but  found  there  no  healing.  In  strange  countries,  as  in 
'  the  well-known  ;  in  savage  deserts,  as  in  the  press  of 
'  corrupt  civilisation,  it  was  ever  the  same :  how  could 
'  your  Wanderer  escape  from  —  his  own  Shadow  ?  Never- 
'  theless  still  Forward  !  I  felt  as  if  in  great  haste  ;  to  do  5 
'  I  saw  not  what.  From  the  depths  of  my  own  heart,  it 
'  called  to  me.  Forwards  !  The  winds  and  the  streams, 
'  and  all  Nature  sounded  to  me,  Forwards !  Ach  Gott^ 
'  I  was  even,  once  for  all,  a  Son  of  Time.' 

From  which  is  it  not  clear  that  the  internal  Satanic  10 
School  was  still  active  enough  ?  He  says  elsewhere  : 
'The  Enchiridion  of  Epictetus  I  had  ever  with  me,  often 
'  as  my  sole  rational  companion  ;  and  regret  to  mention 
'that  the  nourishment  it  yielded  was  trifling.'  Thou 
foolish  Teufelsdrockh  !  How  could  it  else  ?  Hadst  thou  1 5 
not  Greek  enough  to  understand  thus  much  :  The  end  of 
Man  is  an  Action^  and  not  a  Thought^  though  it  were  the 
noblest .'' 

'  How  I  lived  ? '  writes  he  once  :  '  Friend,  hast  thou 
considered  the  "rugged  all-nourishing  Earth,"  as  Soph-  20 
ocles  well  names  her ;  how  she  feeds  the  sparrow  on  the 
house-top,  much  more  her  darling,  man  ?  While  thou 
stirrest  and  livest,  thou  hast  a  probability  of  victual. 
My  breakfast  of  tea  has  been  cooked  by  a  Tartar 
woman,  with  water  of  the  Amur,  who  wiped  her  earthen  25 
kettle  with  a  horse-tail.  I  have  roasted  wild-eggs  in  the 
sand  of  Sahara ;  I  have  awakened  in  Paris  Esirapades 
and  Vienna  Malzleins,  with  no  prospect  of  breakfast  be- 
yond elemental  liquid.  That  I  had  my  Living  to  seek 
saved  me  from  Dying,  —  by  suicide.  In  our  busy  Eu-  30 
rope,  is  there  not  an  everlasting  demand  for  Intellect, 
in  the  chemical,  mechanical,  political,  religious,  educa- 
tional, commercial  departments  t  In  Pagan  countries, 
cannot   one   write    Fetishes  ?     Living !     Little  knowest 


144  SAKTOK  j^:ESAjrrus. 

'  thou  what  alchemy  is  in  an  inventive  Soul ;  how,  as  with 
'its  little  finger,  it  can  create  provision  enough  for  the 
'  body  (of  a  Philosopher) ;  and  then,  as  with  both  hands, 
*  create  quite  other  than  provision  ;  namely,  spectres  to 

5  '  torment  itself  withal.' 

Poor  Teufelsdrockh !  Flying  with  Hunger  always 
parallel  to  him ;  and  a  whole  Infernal  Chase  in  his  rear ; 
so  that  the  countenance  of  Hunger  is  comparatively  a 
friend's !     Thus  must  he,  in  the  temper  of  ancient  Cain, 

10  or  of  the  modern  Wandering  Jew,  —  save  only  that  he  feels 
himself  not  guilty  and  but  suffering  the  pains  of  guilt,  — 
wend  to  and  fro  with  aimless  speed.  Thus  must  he,  over 
the  whole  surface  of  the  earth  (by  foot-prints),  write  his 
Sorrows  of  Teufelsdrockh ;  even  as  the  great  Goethe,  in 

15  passionate  words,  had  to  write  his  Sorrows  of  We?'ter, 
before  the  spirit  freed  herself,  and  he  could  become  a 
Man.  Vain  truly  is  the  hope  of  your  swiftest  Runner  to 
escape  'from  his  own  Shadow'!  Nevertheless,  in  these 
sick  days,  when  the  Born  of  Heaven  first  descries  him- 

20  self  (about  the  age  of  twenty)  in  a  world  such  as  ours, 
richer  than  usual  in  two -things,  in  Truths  grown  obsolete, 
and  Trades  grown  obsolete,  —  what  can  the  fool  think 
but  that  it  is  all  a  Den  of  Lies,  wherein  whoso  will  not 
speak  Lies  and  act  Lies,  must  stand  idle  and  despair  ? 

25  Whereby  it  happens  that,  for  your  nobler  minds  the  pub- 
lishing of  some  such  Work  of  Art,  in  one  or  the  other 
dialect,  becomes  almost  a  necessity.  For  what  is  it  prop- 
erly but  an  Altercation  with  the  Devil,  before  you  begin 
honestly  Fighting  him  ?     Your  Byron  publishes  his  Sor- 

30  rows  of  Lord  George,  in  verse  and  in  prose,  and  copiously 
otherwise  :  your  Bonaparte  represents  his  Sorrozvs  of  Na- 
poleon Opera,  in  ail-too  stupendous  style ;  with  music  of 
cannon-volleys,  and  murder-shrieks  of  a  world ;  his  stage- 
lights  are  the  fires  of  Conflagration ;  his  rhyme  and  reci- 


THE   EVERLASTING  NO.  145 

tative  are  the  tramp  of  embattled  Hosts  and  the  sound 
of  falling  Cities.  —  Happier  is  he  who,  like  our  Clothes- 
Philosopher,  can  write  such  matter,  since  it  must  be 
written,  on  the  insensible  Earth,  with  his  shoe-soles  only ; 
and  also  survive  the  writing  thereof ! 


CHAPTER  VII. 


THE    EVERLASTING    NO. 


Under  the  strange  nebulous  envelopment,  wherein  our 
Professor  has  now  shrouded  himself,  no  doubt  but  his 
spiritual  nature  is  nevertheless  progressive,  and  growing : 
for  how  can  the  '  Son  of  Time,'  in  any  case,  stand  still  ? 
We  behold  him,  through  those  dim  years,  in  a  state  of  10 
crisis,  of  transition  :  his  mad  Pilgrimings,  and  general 
solution  into  aimless  Discontinuity,  what  is  all  this  but 
a  mad  Fermentation  ;  wherefrom,  the  fiercer  it  is,  the 
clearer  product  will  one  day  evolve  itself  .'* 

Such  transitions  are  ever  full  of  pain  :  thus  the  Eagle  15 
when  he  moults  is  sickly  ;  and,  to  attain  his  new  beak, 
must    harshly  dash-off  the   old    one  upon  rocks.     What 
Stoicism  soever  our  Wanderer,  in  his  individual  acts  and 
motions,  may  affect,  it  is  clear  that  there  is  a  hot  fever 
of  anarchy   and   misery  raving  within ;   coruscations   of  20 
which  flash  out:  as,  indeed,  how  could  there  be  other? 
Have  we  not  seen  him  disappointed,  bemocked  of  Des- 
tiny, through  long  years  ?     All  that  the  young  heart  might 
desire  and  pray  for  has  been  denied ;   nay,  as  in  the  last 
worst  instance,  offered  and  then  snatched  away.     Ever  an  25 
'  excellent  Passivity  ;'    but  of  useful,  reasonable  Activity, 
essential    to    the    former   as    Food   to   Hunger,   nothing 


146  SAKTOR   RESARTUS. 

granted :  till  at  length,  in  this  wild  Pilgrimage,  he  must 
forcibly  seize  for  himself  an  Activity,  though  useless,  un- 
reasonable. Alas,  his  cup  of  bitterness,  which  had  been 
filling  drop  by  drop,  ever  since  the  first  '  ruddy  morning ' 
5  in  the  Hinterschlag  Gymnasium,  was  at  the  very  lip ; 
and  then  with  that  poison-drop,  of  the  Towgood-and-Blu- 
mine  business,  it  runs  over,  and  even  hisses  over  in  a 
deluge  of  foam. 

He   himself  says  once,   with  more  justice  than   origi- 

10  nality :  'Man  is,  properly  speaking,  based  upon   Hope,         x 
'  he  has  no  other  possession  but  Hope  ;  this  world  of  his       A 
'  is  emphatically  the  Place  of  Hope.'    What  then  was  our 
Professor's  possession  ?     We   see  him,  for  the  present, 
quite  shut-out  from  Hope ;    looking  not  into  the  golden 

15  orient,  but  vaguely  all  around  into  a  dim  copper  firma- 
ment, pregnant  with  earthquake  and  tornado. 

Alas,  shut-out  from  Hope,  in  a  deeper  sense  than  we 
yet  dream  of  !  For.  as  he  wanders  wearisomely  through 
this  world,  he   has  now  lost  all  tidings  of  another  and 

20  higher.  Full  of  religion,  or  at  least  of  religiosity,  as  our 
Friend  has  since  exhibited  himself,  he  hides  not  that,  in 
those  days,  he  was  wholly  irreligious  :  '  Doubt  had  dark- 
'ened  into  Unbelief,'  says  he;  'shade  after  shade  goes 
'  grimly  over  your  soul,  till  you  have  the  fixed,  starless,  Tar- 

25  '  tarean  black.'  To  such  readers  as  have  reflected,  what  can 
be  called  reflecting,  on  man's  life,  and  happily  discovered, 
in  contradiction  to  much  Profit-and-Loss  Philosophy, 
speculative  and  practical,  that  Soul  is  not  synonymous 
with  Stomach  ;  who  understand,  therefore,  in  our  Friend's 

30  words,  '  that,  for  man's  well-being,  P'aith  is  properly  the 
'  one   thing    needful ;    how,   with   it.    Martyrs,    otherwise 

*  weak,  can  cheerfully  endure  the  shame  and  the  cross ; 

*  and  without  it.  Worldlings  puke-up  their  sick  existence, 
'  by  suicide,  in   the   midst  of  luxury ' :  to  such,  it  will  be 


THE   EVERLASTING  NO.  147 

clear  that,  for  a  pure  moral  nature,  the  loss  of  his  reli- 
gious Belief  was  the  loss  of  everything.     Unhappy  young 
man  !     All  wounds,  the  crush  of  long-continued  Destitu- 
tion, the  stab  of  false  Friendship,  and  of  false  Love,  all 
wounds  in  thy  so  genial  heart,  would  have  healed  again,    5 
had  not  its  life-warmth  been  withdrawn.     Well  might  he 
exclaim,  in  his  wild  way :  '  Is  there  no  God,  then ;  but  at 
best  an  absentee  God,  sitting  idle,  ever  since  the  first 
Sabbath,  at  the  outside  of  his  Universe,  and  j-^^ing  it 
go  ?     Has  the  word  Duty  no  meaning ;  is  what  we  call  10 
Duty  no  divine  Messenger  and  Guide,  but  a  false  earthly 
*^antasm,  made-up  of  Desire  and  Fear,  of  emanations 
from  the  Gallows  and  from  Doctor  Graham's  Celestial 
Bed  ?     Happiness  of  an  approving  Conscience  !     Did 
not   Paul   of  Tarsus,  whom   admiring  men   have   since  15 
named  Saint,  feel   that  he  was  "  the  chief  of  sinners," 
and  Nero  of  Rome,  jocund  in  spirit  {uiohlgemjith),  spend 
much  of  his  time    in  fiddling  .^     Foolish  Wordmonger, 
and  Motive-grinder,  who  in  thy  Logic-mill  hast  an  earthly 
mechanism  for  the  Godlike  itself,  and  wouldst  fain  grind  20 
me  out  Virtue  from  the  husks  of  Pleasure,  —  I  tell  thee. 
Nay !     To  the  unregenerate  Prometheus  Vinctus  of  a 
man,  it  is  ever  the  bitterest  aggravation  of  his  wretched- 
ness that  he  is  conscious  of  Virtue,  that  he  feels  himself 
the  victim  not  of  suffering  only,  but  of  injustice.     What  25 
then .?     Is  the   heroic   inspiration  we   name  Virtue  but 
some  Passion ;  some  bubble  of  the  blood,  bubbling  in 
the  direction  others  profit  by  .?     I  know  not :   only  this  I 
know,  If  what  thou  namest  Happiness  be  our  true  aim, 
then  are  we  all  astray.    With  Stupidity  and  sound  diges-  30 
tion  man  may  front  much.     But  what,  in  these  dull  un- 
imaginative days  are  the  terrors  of  Conscience  to  the 
diseases  of  the  Liver  !     Not  on  Morality,  but  on  Cook- 
ery, let  us  build  our  stronghold  :   there  brandishing  our 


148  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  frying-pan,  as  censer,  let  us  offer  sweet  incense  to  the 
'  Devil,  and  live  at  ease  on  the  fat  things  he  has  provided 
'  for  his  Elect ! ' 

Thus  has  the  bewildered  Wanderer  to  stand,  as  so 
5  many  have  done,  shouting  question  after  question  into 
the  Sibyl-cave  of  Destiny,  and  receive  no  Answer  but  an 
Echo.  It  is  all  a  grim  Desert,  this  once-f^ir  world  of 
his  ;  wherein  is  heard  only  the  howling  of  wild-beasts,  or 
the  shrieks  of  despairing,  hate-filled  men ;  and  no  Pillar 
10  of  Cloud  by  day,  and  no  Pillar  of  Fire  by  night,  any 
longer  guides  the  Pilgrim.  To  such  length  has  the  spirit 
of  Inquiry  carried  him.  '  But  what  boots  it  {luas  thufs)  ? ' 
cries  he  ;  'it  is  but  the  common  lot  in  this  era.  Not 
having  come  to  spiritual  majority  prior  to  the  Siecle  de 
Louis  Quinze,  and  not  being  born  purely  a  Loghead 
{Dimwikopf),  thou  hadst  no  other  outlook.  The  whole 
world  is,  like  thee,  sold  to  Unbelief ;  their  old  Temples 
of  the  Godhead,  which  for  long  have  not  been  rainproof, 
crumble  down ;  and  men  ask  now :  Where  is  the  God- 
20    head;  our  eyes  never  saw  him.'^' 

Pitiful  enough  were  it,  for  all  these  wild  utterances,  to 

call  our  Diogenes  wicked.     Unprofitable  servants  as  we 

all  are,  perhaps  at  no  era  of  his  life  was  he  more  deci- 

-,  sively  the  Servant  of  Goodness,  the  Servant  of  God,  than 

25  even  now  when  doubting  God's  existence.     *  One  circum- 

*  stance  I  note,'  says  he  :  'after  all  the  nameless  woe  that 

'  Inquiry,  which  for  me,  what  it  is  not  always,  was  genu- 

'  ine  Love  of  Truth,  had  wrought  me,  I  nevertheless  still 

'  loved  Truth,  and  would  bate  no  jot  of  my  allegiance  to 

30  '  her.     "  Truth  !  "  I  cried,  "  though  the  Heavens  crush  me 

'  for  following  her  :  no  Falsehood  !  though  a  whole  celes- 

'  tial  Lubberland  were  the  price  of  Apostasy."     In  con- 

'  duct  it  was  the  same.     Had  a  divine  Messenger  from 

'  the  clouds,  or  miraculous  Handwriting  on  the  wall,  con- 


THE  EVERLASTING   NO.  i^g 

'  vincingly  proclaimed  to  me  T/ii's  tJiou  shalt  do,  with  what 
'  passionate  readiness,  as  I  often  thought,  would  I  have 
'  done  it,  had  it  been  leaping  into  the  infernal  Fire. 
'  Thus,  in  spite  of  all  Motive-grinders,  and  Mechanical 
'  Profit-and-Loss  Philosophies,  with  the  sick  ophthalmia  5 
'  and  hallucination  they  had  brought  on,  was  the  Infinite 
'  nature  of  Duty  still  dimly  present  to  me  :  living  without 

*  God  in  the  world,  of  God's  light  I  was  not  utterly  be- 

*  reft ;  if  my  as  yet  sealed  eyes,  with  their  unspeakable 

'  longing,   could  nowhere  see  Him,  nevertheless  in  my  10 
'  heart  He  was  present,  and  His  heaven-written  Law  still 
'  stood  legible  and  sacred  there.' 

Meanwhile,  under  all  these  tribulations,  and  temporal 
and  spiritual  destitutions,  what  must  the  Wanderer,  in 
his  silent  soul,  have  endured  !     '  The  painfullest  feeling,'  15 
writes  he,   'is  that  of  your  own  Feebleness  {Unkraft)\ 
'  ever  as  the  English  Milton  says,  to  be  weak  is  the  true 
'  misery.     And  yet  of  your  Strength  there  is  and  can  be 
'  no  clear  feeling,  save  by  what  you  have  prospered  in, 
'  by    what   you    have    done.      Between    vague    wavering  20 
'  Capability  and  fixed  indubitable  Performance,  what  a 
'  difference !     A   certain    inarticulate    Self-consciousness"^ 
'  dwells  dimly  in  us ;  which  only  our  Works  can  render 
'  articulate  and  decisively  discernible.      Our  Works  are 
'  the  mirror  wherein  the  spirit  first  sees  its  natural  linea-  25 
'  ments.     Hence,  too,  the  folly  of  that  impossible  Pre- 
*cept,  Kfiow  thyself;   till  it  be  translated  into  this  par- 
'  tially  possible  one.  Know  what  tho2i  ca?ist  work  at. 

'  But  for  me,  so  strangely  unprosperous  had  I  been, 
'the  net-result  of  my  Workings  amounted  as  yet  simply  30 
'  to  —  Nothing.  How  then  could  I  believe  in  my 
'  Strength,  when  there  was  as  yet  no  mirror  to  see  it  in  ? 
'  Ever  did  this  agitating,  yet,  as  I  now  perceive,  quite 
'  frivolous  question,  remain  to  me  insoluble :    Hast  thou 


^o  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

a  certain  Faculty,  a  certain  Worth,  such  even  as  the 
most  have  not ;  or  art  thou  the  completest  Dullard  of 
these  modern  times  ?  Alas  !  the  fearful  Unbelief  is  un- 
belief in  yourself ;  and  how  could  I  believe  ?  Had  not 
my  first,  last  Faith  in  myself,  when  even  to  me  the 
Heavens  seemed  laid  open,  and  I  dared  to  love,  been 
ail-too  cruelly  belied  ?  The  speculative  Mystery  of  Life 
grew  ever  more  mysterious  to  me  ;  neither  in  the  prac- 
tical Mystery  had  I  made  the  slightest  progress,  but 
been  everywhere  buffeted,  foiled,  and  contemptuously 
cast  out.  A  feeble  unit  in  the  middle  of  a  threatening 
Infinitude,  I  seemed  to  have  nothing  given  me  but  eyes, 
whereby  to  discern  my  own  wretchedness.  Invisible 
yet  impenetrable  walls,  as  of  Enchantment,  divided  me 
from  all  living :  was  there,  in  the  wide  world,  any  true 
bosom  I  could  press  trustfully  to  mine .?  O  Heaven, 
No,  there  was  none  !  I  kept  a  lock  upon  my  lips  :  why 
should  I  speak  much  with  that  shifting  variety  of  so- 
called  Friends,  in  whose  withered,  vain  and  too-hungry 
souls.  Friendship  was  but  an  incredible  tradition  ?  In 
such  cases,  your  resource  is  to  talk  little,  and  that  little 
mostly  from  the  Newspapers.  Now  when  I  look  back, 
it  was  a  strange  isolation  I  then  lived  in.  The  men  and 
women  around  me,  even  speaking  with  me,  were  but 
Figures :  I  had,  practically,  forgotten  that  they  were 
alive,  that  they  were  not  merely  automatic.  In  the  midst 
of  their  crowded  streets,  and  assemblages,  I  walked  soli- 
tary ;  and  (except  as  it  was  my  own  heart,  not  another's, 
that  I  kept  devouring)  savage  also,  as  the  tiger  in  his 
jungle.  Some  comfort  it  would  have  been,  could  I,  like 
a  Faust,  have  fancied  myself  tempted  and  tormented  of 
the  Devil ;  for  a  Hell,  as  I  imagine,  without  Life,  though 
only  diabolic  Life,  were  more  frightful :  but  in  our  age 
of  Down-pulling  and  Disbelief,  the  very  Devil  has  been 


THE   EVERLASTING   NO.  151 

'  pulled  down,  you  cannot  so  much  as  believe  in  a  Devil. 
'  To  me  the  Universe  was  all  void  of  Life,  of  Purpose,  of 
'Volition,  even  of  Hostility:  it  was  one  huge,  dead,  im- 
'  measurable  Steam-engine,  rolling  on,  in  its  dead  indif- 
'ference,  to  grind  me  limb  from  limb.  O,  the  vast  5 
'gloomy,  solitary  Golgotha,  and  Mill  of  Death!  Why 
'  was  the  Living  banished  thither  companionless,  con- 
'  scious  ?  Why,  if  there  is  no  Devil ;  nay,  unless  the 
'  Devil  is  your  God  ? ' 

A  prey  incessantly  to  such  corrosions,  might  not,  more-  10 
over,  as  the  worst  aggravation  to  them,  the  iron  constitu- 
tion even  of  a  Teufelsdrockh  threaten  to  fail  ?     We  con- 
jecture that  he  has  known  sickness ;  and,  in  spite  of  his 
locomotive  habits,  perhaps  sickness  of  the  chronic  sort. 
Hear  this,  for  example  :  '  How  beautiful  to  die  of  broken-  15 
heart,   on   Paper !      Quite    another    thing    in    practice ; 
every  window  of  your  Feeling,  even  of  your  Intellect,  as 
it  were,  begrimed  and  mud-bespattered,  so  that  no  pure 
ray  can  enter ;  a  whole  Drugshop  in  your  inwards  ;  the 
foredone  soul  drowning  slowly  in  quagmires  of  Disgust ! '    20 
Putting  all   which   external   and   internal  miseries  to- 
gether, may  we  not  find  in  the  following  sentences,  quite 
in  our  Professor's  still  vein,  significance  enough  ?    '  From 
'  Suicide  a  certain   aftershine   {Nachschebi)  of  Christian- 
'  ity  withheld  me  :   perhaps  also  a  certain   indolence  of  25 
'character;  for,  was  not  that  a  remedy  I  had  at  any  time 
'  within  reach  ?     Often,   however,   was   there   a  question 
'  present  to  me  :    Should  some  one  now,  at  the  turning  of 
'  that  corner,  blow  thee  suddenly  out  of  Space,  into  the 
'  other  World,  or  other  No-world,  by  pistol-shot,  —  how  30 
'were  it?     On  which  ground,  too,  I  have  often,  in  sea- 
'  storms  and  sieged  cities  and  other  death-scenes,  exhib- 
'  ited  an  imperturbability,  which  passed,  falsely  enough, 
'for  courage.' 


152 


SAR7VR   RESARTUS. 


'  So  had  it  lasted,'  concludes  the  Wanderer,  *  so  had  it 
lasted,  as  in  bitter  protracted  Death-agony,  through  long 
years.  The  heart  within  me,  unvisited  by  any  heavenly 
dewdrop,  was  smouldering  in  sulphurous,  slow-consum- 
ing fire.  Almost  since  earliest  memory  I  had  shed  no 
tear  ;  or  once  only  when  I,  murmuring  half-audibly,  re- 
cited Faust's  Deathsong,  that  wild  Selig  der  iie?i  cr  im 
Siegesglanze  findet  (Happy  whom  he  finds  in  Battle's 
splendour),  and  thought  that  of  this  last  Friend  even  I 
was  not  forsaken,  that  Destiny  itself  could  not  doom  me 
not  to  die.  Having  no  hope,  neither  had  I  any  definite 
fear,  were  it  of  Man  or  of  Devil :  nay,  I  often  felt  as  if 
it  might  be  solacing,  could  the  Arch-Devil  himself, 
though  in  Tartarean  terrors,  but  rise  to  me,  that  I 
might  tell  him  a  little  of  my  mind.  And  yet,  strangely 
enough,  I  lived  in  a  continual,  indefinite,  pining  fear ; 
tremulous,  pusillanimous,  apprehensive  of  I  knew  not 
what :  it  seemed  as  if  all  things  in  the  Heavens  above 
and  the  Earth  beneath  would  hurt  me ;  as  if  the 
Heavens  and  the  Earth  were  but  boundless  jaws  of 
a  devouring  monster,  wherein  I,  palpitating,  waited  to 
be  devoured. 

'  Full  of  such  humour,  and  perhaps  the  miserablest  man 
in  the  whole  French  Capital  or  Suburbs,  was  I,  one  sultry 
Dog-day,  after  much  perambulation,  toiling  along  the 
dirty  little  Rue  Saint-Thomas  de  V Enfer^  among  civic  rub- 
bish enough,  in  a  close  atmosphere,  and  over  pavements 
hot  as  Nebuchadnezzar's  Furnace ;  whereby  doubtless 
my  spirits  were  little  cheered ;  when,  all  at  once, 
there  rose  a  Thought  in  me,  and  I  asked  myself  :  ''  What 
art  thou  afraid  of  ?  W^herefore,  like  a  coward,  dost  thou 
for  ever  pip  and  whimper,  and  go  cowering  and  trem- 
bling ?  Despicable  biped !  what  is  the  sum-total  of  the 
worst   that   lies    before   thee  ?     Death .?     Well,    Death ; 


THE   EVERLASTING   NO.  153 

*  and  say  the  pangs  of  Tophet  too,  and  all  that  the  Devil 

*  and  Man  may,  will,  or  can  do  against  thee  !  Hast  thou 
'  not  a  heart ;  canst  thou  not  suffer  whatsoever  it  be  ;  and, 
'  as  a  Child  of  Freedom,  though  outcast,  trample  Tophet 

'  itself  under  thy  feet,  while  it  consumes  thee  ?  Let  it  5 
'  come,  then  ;  I  will  meet  it  and  defy  it !  "  And  as  I  so 
'  thought,  there  rushed  like  a  stream  of  fire  over  my 
'  whole  soul ;  and  I  shook  base  Fear  away  from  me 
'  forever.  I  was  strong,  of  unknown  strength ;  a  spirit, 
'almost  a  god.  Ever  from  that  time,  the  temper  of  my  10 
'  misery  was  changed :    not  Fear  or  whining  Sorrow  was 

*  it,  but  Indignation  and  grim  fire-eyed  Defiance. 

'Thus  had  the  Everlasting  No  {das  ewige  Neiii) 
'  pealed  authoritatively  through  all  the  recesses  of  my 
'  Being,  of  my  Me;  and  then  was  it  that  my  whole  Me  15 
'  stood  up,  in  native  God-created  majesty,  and  with  em- 
'  phasis  recorded  its  Protest.  Such  a  Protest,  the  most 
'  important  transaction  in  Life,  may  that  same  Indigna- 
'  tion  and  Defiance,  in  a  psychological  point  of  view,  be 
'  fitly  called.     The  Everlasting  No  had  said :   "  Behold,  20 

*  thou  art  fatherless,  outcast,  and  the  Universe  is  mine 
'  (the  Devil's) ;"  to  which  my  whole  Me  now  made 
'  answer :  "  /  am  not  thine,  but  Free,  and  forever  hate 
' thee  ! " 

'  It  is  from  this  hour  that  I  incline  to  date  my  Spiritual  25 
'  New-birth,  or  Baphometic  Fire-baptism ;   perhaps  I  di- 
'  rectly  thereupon  began  to  be  a  Man.' 


54  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER     VIII. 


CENTRE    OF    INDIFFERENCE. 


Though,  after  this  '  Baphometic  Fire-baptism '  of  his, 
our  Wanderer  signifies  that  his  Unrest  was  but  increased  ; 
as,  indeed,  '  Indignation  and  Defiance,'  especially  against 
things  in  general,  are  not  the  most  peaceable  inmates ; 
5  yet  can  the  Psychologist  surmise  that  it  was  no  longer  a 
quite  hopeless  Unrest ;  that  henceforth  it  had  at  least  a 
fixed  centre  to  revolve  round.  For  the  fire-baptised  soul, 
long  so  scathed  and  thunder-riven,  here  feels  its  own 
Freedom,  which  feeling  is  its  Baphometic  Baptism  :  the 

lo  citadel  of  its  whole  kingdom  it  has  thus  gained  by  assault ; 
and  will  keep  inexpugnable  ;  outwards  from  which  the 
remaining  dominions,  not  indeed  without  hard  battling, 
will  doubtless  by  degrees  be  conquered  and  pacificated. 
Under   another  figure,   we   might   say,    if   in  that   great 

15  moment,  in  the  Rue  Saint-Thomas  de  V Enfer^  the  old 
inward  Satanic  School  was  not  yet  thrown  out  of  doors, 
it  received  peremptory  judicial  notice  to  quit ;  — whereby, 
for  the  rest,  its  howl-chantings,  Ernulphus-cursings,  and 
rebellious  gnashings  of  teeth,  might,  in  the  mean   while, 

20  become  only  the  more  tumultuous,  and  difficult  to  keep 
secret. 

Accordingly,  if  we  scrutinise  these  Pilgrimings  well, 
there  is  perhaps  discernible  henceforth  a  certain  in- 
cipient   method    in    their    madness.       Not    wholly    as    a 

-5  Spectre  does  Teufelsdrockh  now  storm  through  the 
world ;  at  worst  as  a  spectre-fighting  Man,  nay  who 
will  one  day  be  a  Spectre-queller.  If  pilgriming  rest- 
lessly to  so  many  '  Saints'  Wells,'  and  ever  without 
quenching  of  his  thirst,  he  nevertheless  finds  little  secu- 

30  lar  wells,  whereby  from  time  to  time  some  alleviation  is 


CENTRE    OF  INDIFFERENCE. 


155 


ministered.  In  a  word,  he  is  now,  if  not  ceasing,  yet 
intermitting  to  '  eat  his  own  heart  ;'  and  clutches  round 
him  outwardly  on  the  Not-me  for  wholesomer  food. 
Does  not  the  following  glimpse  exhibit  him  in  a  much 
more  natural  state  ?  5 

'  Towns  also  and  Cities,  especially  the  ancient,  I  failed 
not  to  look  upon  with  interest.     How  beautiful  to  see 
thereby,  as  through  a  long  vista,  into  the  remote  Time ; 
to  have,  as  it  were,  an  actual  section  of  almost  the  earli- 
est Past  brought  safe  into  the   Present,  and  set  before  10 
your  eyes  !     There,  in  that  old  City,  was  a  live  ember  of 
Culinary  Fire  put  down,  say    only   two-thousand   years 
ago  ;  and  there,  burning  more  or  less  triumphantly,  with 
such  fuel  as  the  region  yielded,  it  has  burnt,  and  still 
burns,  and  thou  thyself  seest  the  very  smoke  thereof.  15 
Ah  !  and  the  far  more  mysterious  live  ember  of  Vital 
Fire  was  then  also  put  down  there ;    and  still  miracu- 
lously burns   and    spreads ;    and   the  smoke  and  ashes 
thereof  (in  these  Judgment-Halls  and  Churchyards),  and 
its  bellows-engines  (in  these  Churches),  thou  still  seest ;  20 
and  its  flame,  looking  out  from  every  kind  countenance, 
and  every  hateful  one,  still  warms  thee  or  scorches  thee. 
'  Of  Man's  Activity  and  Attainment  the  chief  results 
are  aeriform,  mystic,  and  preserved  in  Tradition  only :  | 
such  "are  his  Forms  of  Government,  with  the  Authority  25 
they  rest  on ;  his  Customs,  or  Fashions  both  of  Cloth- 
Habits   and   of    Soul-habits ;   much   more  his  collective 
stock  of  Handicrafts,  the  whole  Faculty  he  has  acquired 
of  manipulating  Nature  :  all  these  things,  as  indispens- 
able and  priceless  as  they  are,  cannot  in  any  way  be  30 
fixed  under  lock  and  key,  but  must  flit,  spirit-like,  on 
impalpable  vehicles,  from  Father  to  Son  ;  if  you  demand 
sight  of  them,  they  are  nowhere  to  be  met  with.    Visible 
Ploughmen  and  Hammermen  there  have  been,  ever  from 


156  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

Cain  and  Tubalcain  downwards  :  but  where  does  your 
accumulated  Agricultural,  Metallurgic,  and  other  Manu- 
facturing Skill  lie  warehoused  ?  It  transmits  itself  on 
the  atmospheric  air,  on  the  sun's  rays  (by  Hearing  and 
Vision)  ;  it  is  a  thing  aeriform,  impalpable,  of  quite 
spiritual  sort.  In  like  manner,  ask  me  not,  Where  are 
the  Laws  ;  where  is  the  Government  ?  In  vain  wilt 
thou  go  to  Schonbrunn,  to  Downing  Street,  to  the  Palais 
Bourbon  :  thou  findest  nothing  there,  but  brick  or  stone 
houses,  and  some  bundles  of  Papers  tied  with  tape. 
Where,  then,  is  that  same  cunningly-devised  almighty 
Government  of  theirs  to  be  laid  hands  on?  Every- 
where, yet  nowhere  :  seen  only  in  its  works,  this  too  is 
a  thing  aeriform,  invisible  ;  or  if  you  will,  mystic  and 
miraculous.  So  spiritual  {geistig)  is  our  w^hole  daily 
Life  :  all  that  we  do  springs  out  of  Mystery,  Spirit,  in- 
visible Force  ;  only  like  a  little  Cloud-image,  or  Armida's 
Palace,  air-built,  does  the  Actual  body  itself  forth  from 
the  great  mystic  Deep. 

'  Visible  and  tangible  products  of  the  Past,  again,  I 
reckon-up  to  the  extent  of  three :  Cities,  with  their 
Cabinets  and  Arsenals  ;  then  tilled  Fields,  to  either  or  to 
both  of  which  divisions  Roads  with  their  Bridges  may 

belong  ;   and  thirdly Books.     In  which  third  truly, 

the  last-invented,  lies  a  worth  far  surpassing  that  of  the 
two  others.  Wondrous  indeed  is  the  virtue  of  a  true 
Book.  Not  like  a  dead  city  of  stones,  yearly  crumbling, 
yearly  needing  repair ;  more  like  a  tilled  field,  but  then 
a  spiritual  field :  like  a  spiritual  tree,  let  me  rather  say, 
it  stands  from  year  to  year,  and  from  age  to  age  (we 
have  Books  that  already  number  some  hundred-and-fifty 
human  ages)  ;  and  yearly  comes  its  new  produce  of 
leaves  (Commentaries,  Deductions,  Philosophical,  Politi- 
cal Systems  ;  or  were  it  only  Sermons,  Pamphlets,  Jour- 


CENTRE    OF  INDIFFERENCE.  157 

'  nalistic  Essays),  every  one  of  which  is  talismanic  and 
'  thaumaturgic,  for  it  can  persuade  men.  O  thou  who  art 
'  able  to  write  a  Book,  which  once  in  the  two  centuries  or 
'  oftener  there  is  a  man  gifted  to  do,  envy  not  him  whom 
'  they  name  City-builder,  and  inexpressibly  pity  him  whom  5 
'  they  name  Conqueror  or  City-burner !  Thou  too  art  a 
'  Conqueror  and  Victor  ;  but  of  the  true  sort,  namely  over 
'  the  Devil :  thou  too  hast  built  what  will  outlast  all  marble 
'  and  metal,  and  be  a  wonder-bringing  City  of  the  Mind, 
'  a  Temple  and  Seminary  and  Prophetic  Mount,  whereto  10 
'  all  kindreds  of  the  Earth  will  pilgrim.  —  Fool  !  why 
'  journeyest  thou  wearisomely,  in  thy  antiquarian  fervour, 
'  to  gaze  on  the  stone  pyramids  of  Geeza  or  the  clay  ones 
'  of  Sacchara  ?  These  stand  there,  as  I  can  tell  thee, 
'  idle  and  inert,  looking  over  the  Desert,  foolishly  enough,  15 
'  for  the  last  three-thousand  years  :  but  canst  thou  not 
'  open  thy  Hebrew  Bible,  then,  or  even  Luther's  Version 
'  thereof  ? ' 

No  less  satisfactory  is  his  sudden  appearance  not  in 
Battle,  yet  on  some  Battle-field ;  which,  we  soon  gather,  20 
must  be  that  of  Wagram  :    so  that  here,  for  once,  is  a 
certain  approximation  to  distinctness  of  date.     Omitting 
much,  let  us  impart  what  follows  : 

'  Horrible  enough  !  A  whole  Marchfeld  strewed  with 
'  shell-splinters,  cannon-shot,  ruined  tumbrils,  and  dead  25 
'  men  and  horses  ;  stragglers  still  remaining  not  so  much 
'  as  buried.  And  those  red  mould  heaps  :  ay,  there  lie 
'  the  Shells  of  Men,  out  of  which  all  the  Life  and  Virtue 
'  has  been  blown  ;  and  now  they  are  swept  together,  and 
'  crammed-down  out  of  sight,  like  blown  Egg-shells  !  —  30 
'  Did  Nature,  when  she  bade  the  Donau  bring  down  his 
'mould-cargoes  from  the  Carinthian  and  Carpathian 
'  Heights,  and  spread  them  out  here  into  the  softest, 
'  richest  level,  —  intend  thee,   O   Marchfeld,  for  a  corn- 


158 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


bearing  Nursery,  whereon  her  children  might  be 
nursed  ;  or  for  a  Cockpit,  wherein  they  might  the  more 
commodiously  be  throttled  and  tattered?  Were  thy 
three  broad  highways,  meeting  here  from  the  ends  of 
Europe,  made  for  Ammunition-wagons,  then  ?  Were  thy 
Wagrams  and  Stillfrieds  but  so  many  ready-built  Case- 
mates, wherein  the  house  of  Hapsburg  might  batter  with 
artillery,  and  with  artillery  be  battered  ?  Konig  Ottokar, 
amid  yonder  hillocks,  dies  under  Rodolf's  truncheon; 
here  Kaiser  Franz  falls  a-swoon  under  Napoleon's : 
within  which  five  centuries,  to  omit  the  others,  how  hast 
thy  breast,  fair  Plain,  been  defaced  and  defiled  !  The 
greensward  is  torn-up  and  trampled-down  ;  man's  fond 
care  of  it,  his  fruit-trees,  hedge-rows,  and  pleasant 
dwellings,  blown-away  with  gunpowder;  and  the  kind 
seedfield  lies  a  desolate,  hideous  Place  of  Sculls. — 
Nevertheless,  Nature  is  at  work ;  neither  shall  these 
Powder-Devilkins  with  their  utmost  devilry  gainsay  her  : 
but  all  that  gore  and  carnage  will  be  shrouded-in,  ab- 
sorbed into  manure ;  and  next  year  the  Marchfeld  will 
be  green,  nay  greener.  Thrifty  unwearied  Nature, 
ever  out  of  our  great  waste  educing  some  little  profit  of 
thy  own,  —  how  dost  thou,  from  the  very  carcass  of  the 
Killer,  bring  Life  for  the  Living ! 

'  What,  speaking  in  quite  unofiicial  language,  is  the  net- 
purport  and  upshot  of  war?  To  my  own  knowledge,  for 
example,  there  dwell  and  toil,  in  the  British  village  of 
Dumdrudge,  usually  some  five-hundred  souls.  From 
these,  by  certain  "  Natural  Enemies  "  of  the  French,  there 
are  successively  selected,  during  the  French  war,  say  thirty 
able-bodied  men :  Dumdrudge,  at  her  own  expense,  has 
suckled  and  nursed  them  ;  she  has,  not  without  difficulty 
and  sorrow,  fed  them  up  to  manhood,  and  even  trained 
them   to   crafts,  so  that   one  can  weave,   another  build, 


CENTRE    OF  INDIFFERENCE. 


159 


another  hammer,  and  the  weakest  can  stand  under  thirty 
stone  avoirdupois.  Nevertheless,  amid  much  weeping 
and  swearing,  they  are  selected  ;  all  dressed  in  red  ;  and 
shipped  away,  at  the  public  charges,  some  two-thousand 
miles,  or  say  only  to  the  south  of  Spain ;  and  fed  there  5 
till  wanted.  And  now  to  that  same  spot  in  the  south  of 
Spain,  are  thirty  similar  French  artisans,  from  a  French 
Dumdrudge,  in  like  manner  wending  :  till  at  length, 
after  infinite  effort,  the  two  parties  come  into  actual  jux- 
taposition ;  and  Thirty  stands  fronting  Thirty,  each  with  10 
a  gun  in  his  hand.  Straightway  the  word  "  Fire  !  "  is 
given  :  and  they  blow  the  souls  out  of  one  another  ;  and 
in  place  of  sixty  brisk  useful  craftsmen,  the  world  has 
sixty  dead  carcasses,  which  it  must  bury,  and  anew  shed 
tears  for.  Had  these  men  any  quarrel  ?  Busy  as  the  15 
Devil  is,  not  the  smallest !  They  lived  far  enough  apart ; 
were  the  entirest  strangers  ;  na}',  in  so  wide  a  Universe, 
there  was  even  unconsciously,  by  Commerce,  some  mutual 
helpfulness  between  them.  How  then  ?  Simpleton  ! 
their  Governors  had  fallen-out ;  and,  instead  of  shooting  20 
one  another,  had  the  cunning  to  make  these  poor  block- 
heads shoot.  —  Alas,  so  is  it  in  Deutschland,  and  hith- 
erto in  all  other  lands;  still  as  of  old,  "what  devilry 
soever  Kings  do,  the  Greeks  must  pay  the  piper  !  "  —  In 
that  fiction  of  the  English  Smollett,  it  is  true,  the  final  25 
Cessation  of  War  is  perhaps  prophetically  shadowed 
forth ;  where  the  two  Natural  Enemies,  in  person,  take 
each  a  Tobacco-pipe,  filled  with  Brimstone  ;  light  the 
same,  and  smoke  in  one  another's  faces  till  the  weaker 
gives  in  :  but  from  such  predicted  Peace-Era,  what  30 
blood-filled  trenches,  and  contentious  centuries,  may 
still  divide  us  ! ' 

Thus  can  the  Professor,  at  least  in  lucid  intervals,  look 
away   from    his    own    sorrows,  over    the    many-coloured 


i6o  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

world,  and  pertinently  enough  note  what  is  passing  there. 
We  may  remark,  indeed,  that  for  the  matter  of  spiritual 
culture,  if  for  nothing  else,  perhaps  few  periods  of  his 
life  were  richer  than  this.  Internally,  there  is  the  most 
5  momentous  instructive  Course  of  Practical  Philosophy, 
with  Experiments,  going  on ;  towards  the  right  compre- 
hension of  which  his  Peripatetic  habits,  favourable  to 
Meditation,  might  help  him  rather  than  hinder.  Exter- 
nally, again,  as  he  wanders  to  and  fro,  there  are,  if  for 

10  the  longing  heart  little  substance,  yet  for  the  seeing  eye 
sights  enough :  in  these  so  boundless  Travels  of  his, 
granting  that  the  Satanic  School  was  even  partially  kept 
down,  what  an  incredible  knowledge  of  our  Planet,  and 
its   Inhabitants  and  their  Works,  that   is  to  say,  of  all 

1 5  knowable  things,  might  not  Teuf elsdrockh  acquire ! 

*I  have  read  in  most  Public  Libraries,'  says  he,  'in- 
'  eluding  those  of  Constantinople  and  Samarcand :  in 
"  most  Colleges,  except  the  Chinese  Mandarin  ones,  I 
'  have  studied,  or  seen  that  there  was  no  studying.     Un- 

20  '  known  languages  have  I  oftenest  gathered  from  their 
'natural  repertory,  the  Air,  by  my  organ  of  Hearing; 
'  Statistics,  Geographies,  Topographies  came,  through  the 
'  Eye,  almost  of  their  own  accord.  The  ways  of  Man, 
'  how  he  seeks  food,  and  warmth,  and  protection  for  him- 

25  '  self,  in  most  regions,  are  ocularly  known  to  me.  Like 
'  the  great  Hadrian,  I  meted-out  much  of  the  terraqueous 
'  Globe  with  a  pair  of  Compasses  that  belonged  to  myself 
'  only. 

'Of  great   Scenes,  why  speak?     Three  summer  days, 

30  '  I  lingered  reflecting,  and  composing  (dichtefe),  by  the 
'  Pine-chasms  of  Vaucluse  ;  and  in  that  clear  lakelet 
'  moistened  my  bread.  I  have  sat  under  the  Palm-trees 
'  of  Tadmor  ;  smoked  a  pipe  among  the  ruins  of  Babylon. 
'  The  great  Wall  of  China  I  have  seen ;   and  can  testify 


CENTRE    OF  INDIFFERENCE.  i6i 

*  that  it  is  of  grey  brick,  coped  and  covered  with  granite, 
'  and  shews  only  second-rate  masonry.  — ^  Great  events, 
'also,  have  not  I  witnessed?  Kings  sweated-down  {aus- 
^ gcjuergelt)  into  BerHn-and-Milan  Customhouse-Officers; 
'  the  World  well  won,  and  the  World  well  lost ;  oftener  5 
'  than  once  a  hundred-thousand  individuals  shot  (by  each 
'  other)  in  one  day.  All  kindreds  and  peoples  and  na- 
'tions  dashed  together,  and  shifted  and  shovelled  into 
'  heaps,  that  they  might  ferment  there,  and  in  time  unite. 
'  The  birth-pangs  of  Democracy,  wherewith  convulsed  10 
'  Europe  was  groaning  in  cries  that  reached  Heaven, 
'  could  not  escape  me. 

'  For  great  Men  I  have  ever  had  the  warmest  predilec- 
'  tion ;  and  can  perhaps  boast  that  few  such  in  this  era 
'have  wholly  escaped  me.  Great  Men  are  the  inspired  15 
'  (speaking  and  acting)  Texts  of  that  divine  Book  of 
'  Revelations,  whereof  a  Chapter  is  completed  from 
'  epoch  to  epoch,  and  by  some  named  History  ;  to  which 
'  inspired  Texts  your  numerous  talented  men,  and  your 
'  innumerable  untalented  men,  are  the  better  or  worse  20 
'  exegetic  Commentaries,  and  wagonload  of  too-stupid, 
'  heretical  or  orthodox,  weekly  Sermons.  For  my  study, 
'  the  inspired  Texts  themselves  !  Thus  did  not  I,  in  very 
'  early  days,  having  disguised  me  as  a  tavern-waiter, 
'  stand  behind  the  field-chairs,  under  that  shady  Tree  at  25 
'  Treisnitz  by  the  Jena  Highway ;  waiting  upon  the  great 
'  Schiller  and  greater  Goethe ;  and  hearing  what  I  have 
'  not  forgotten.     For ' 

But  at  this  point  the  Editor  recalls  his  principle 


of  caution,  some  time  ago  laid  down,  and  must  suppress  30 
much.     Let  not  the   sacredness  of  Laurelled,  still  more, 
of  Crowned  Heads,  be  tampered  with.     Should  we,  at  a 
future  day,  find  circumstances  altered,  and  the  time  come 
for  Publication,  then  may  these  glimpses  into  the  privacy 


1 62  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

of  the  Illustrious  be  conceded ;  which  for  the  present 
were  little  better  than  treacherous,  perhaps  traitorous 
Eavesdroppings.  Of  Lord  Byron,  therefore,  of  Pope 
Pius,  Emperor  Tarakwang,  and  the  'White  Water-roses' 

5  (Chinese  Carbonari)  with  their  mysteries,  no  notice  here ! 
Of  Napoleon  himself  we  shall  only,  glancing  from  afar, 
remark  that  Teufelsdrockh's  relation  to  him  seems  to 
have  been  of  very  varied  character.  At  first  we  find  our 
poor  Professor  on  the  point  of  being  shot  as  a  spy ;  then 

10  taken  into  private  conversation,  even  pinched  on  the  ear, 
yet  presented  with  no  money ;  at  last  indignantly  dis- 
missed, almost  thrown  out  of  doors,  as  an  '  Ideologist.' 
'  He  himself,'  says  the  Professor,  "was  among  the  com- 
'  pletest   Ideologists,  at   least   Ideopraxists :    in  the   Idea 

15  "^  {in  de?'  Idee)  he  lived,  moved  and  fought.  The  man 
'  was  a  Divine  Missionary,  though  unconscious  of  it ; 
'  and  preached,  through  the  cannon's  throat,  that  great 
'  doctrine.  La  carriere  oiiverte  mix  talens  (The  Tools  to 
'  him  that  can  handle  them),  which  is  our  ultimate  Politi- 

20  '  cal  Evangel,  w^herein  alone  can  Liberty  lie.  Madly 
'  enough  he  preached,  it  is  true,  as  Enthusiasts  and  first 
*  Missionaries  are  wont,  with  imperfect  utterance,  amid 
'  much  frothy  rant ;  yet  as  articulately  perhaps  as  the 
'  case  admitted.     Or  call  him,  if  you  will,  an  American 

25  '  Backwoodsman,  who  had  to  fell  unpenetrated  forests, 
'  and  battle  with  innumerable  wolves,  and  did  not  entirely 
'  forbear  strong  liquor,  rioting,  and  even  theft ;  whom, 
'  notwithstanding,  the  peaceful  Sower  will  follow,  and,  as 
'  he  cuts  the  boundless  harvest,  bless.' 

30  More  legitimate  and  decisively  authentic  is  Teufels- 
drockh's appearance  and  emergence  (we  know  not  well 
whence)  in  the  solitude  of  the  North  Cape,  on  that  June 
Midnight.  He  has  a 'light-blue  Spanish  cloak  '  hanging 
round  him,  as  his  '^most  commodious,   principal,  indeed 


CENTRE    OF  INDIFFERENCE.  163 

sole  upper-garment  ;'  and  stands  there,  on  the  World- 
promontory,  looking  over  the  infinite  Brine,  like  a  little 
blue  Belfry  (as  we  figure),  now  motionless  indeed,  yet 
ready,  if  stirred,  to  ring  quaintest  changes. 

'  Silence  as  of  death,'  writes  he  ;   '  for  Midnight,  even  in    5 
the  Arctic  latitudes,  has  its  character :  nothing  but  the 
granite  cliffs  ruddy-tinged,  the  peaceable  gurgle  of  that 
slow-heaving   Polar   Ocean,  over  which   in    the   utmost 
North   the  great  Sun    hangs  low  and  lazy,  as  if  he  too 
were    slumbering.     Yet  is   his   cloud-couch  wrought   of  10 
crimson  and  cloth-of-gold  ;  yet  does  his  light  stream  over 
the  mirror  of  waters,  like  a  tremulous  fire-pillar,  shoot- 
ing downwards  to  the  abyss,  and  hide  itself  under  my 
feet.     In    such    moments,   Solitude  also   is   invaluable  ; 
for  who  would  speak,   or  be   looked  on,  when  behind  15 
him  lies  all  Europe  and  Africa,  fast  asleep,  except  the 
watchmen  ;   and  before  him  the  silent  Immensity,  and 
Palace  of  the  Eternal,  whereof  our  Sun  is  but  a  porch- 
lamp? 

'  Nevertheless,  in  this  solemn  moment,  comes  a  man,  20 
or  monster,  scrambling  from  among  the  rock-hollows  ; 
and,  shaggy,  huge  as  the   Hyperborean  Bear,  hails  me 
in  Russian  speech:  most  probably,  therefore,  a  Russian 
Smuggler.     With  courteous  brevity,  I  signify  my  indif- 
ference to  contraband  trade,  my  humane  intentions,  yet  25 
strong  wish  to  be  private.     In  vain:  the  monster,  count- 
ing doubtless   on   his   superior   stature,  and  minded  to 
make  sport  for  himself,  or  perhaps  profit,  were  it  with 
murder,  continues  to  advance ;  ever  assailing  me  with 
his  importunate  train-oil  breath  ;  and  now  has  advanced,  3° 
till  we  stand  both  on  the  verge  of  the  rock,  the  deep  Sea 
rippling   greedily    down    below.      What    argument    will 
avail  ?     On  the  thick  Hyperborean,  cherubic  reasoning, 
seraphic  eloquence  were  lost.     Prepared  for  such   ex- 


164  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

tremity,  I,  deftly  enough,  whisk  aside  one  step ;  draw 
out,  from  my  interior  reservoirs,  a  sufficient  Birmingham 
Horse-pistol,  and  say,  "  Be  so  obliging  as  retire,  Friend 
{Er  ziehe  sich  zuriick,  Freipid),  and  with  promptitude  !  " 
This  logic  even  the  Hyperborean  understands  :  fast 
enough,  with  apologetic,  petitionary  growl,  he  sidles  off ; 
and,  except  for  suicidal  as  well  as  homicidal  purposes, 
need  not  return. 

'  Such  I  hold  to  be  the  genuine  use  of  Gunpowder  : 
that  it  makes  all  men  alike  tall.  Nay,  if  thou  be  cooler, 
cleverer  than  I,  if  thou  have  more  Mind,  though  all  but 
no  Body  whatever,  then  canst  thou  kill  me  first,  and  art 
the  taller.  Hereby,  at  last,  is  the  Goliath  powerless, 
and  the  David  resistless ;  savage  Animalism  is  nothing, 
inventive  Spiritualism  is  all. 

'  With  respect  to  Duels,  indeed,  I  have  my  own  ideas. 
Few  things,  in  this  so  surprising  world,  strike  me  with 
more  surprise.  Two  little  visual  Spectra  of  men,  hover- 
ing with  insecure  enough  cohesion  in  the  midst  of  the 
Unfathomable,  and  to  dissolve  therein,  at  any  rate, 
very  soon,  —  make  pause  at  the  distance  of  twelve  paces 
asunder ;  whirl  round ;  and,  simultaneously  by  the  cun- 
ningest  mechanism,  explode  one  another  into  Dissolu- 
tion ;  and  off-hand  become  Air,  and  Non-extant !  Deuce 
on  it  (z.'erda7?i7?it),  the  little  spitfires!  —  Nay,  I  think  with 
old  Hugo  von  Trimberg:  "God  must  needs  laugh  out- 
right, could  such  a  thing  be,  to  see  his  wondrous  Mani- 
kins here  below."  ' 


But  amid  these  specialties,  let  us  not  forget  the  great 
30  generality,  which  is  our  chief  quest  here:  How  prospered 
the  inner  man  of  Teufelsdrockh  under  so  much  outward 
shifting?     Does    Legion    still    lurk    in    him,  though    re- 
pressed ;  or  has  he  exorcised  that  Devil's  Brood  ?     We 


CENTRE   OF  INDIFFERENCE.  165 

can  answer  that  the  symptoms  continue  promising.  Ex= 
perience  is  the  grand  spiritual  Doctor ;  and  with  him 
Teufelsdrockh  has  now  been  long  a  patient,  swallowing 
many  a  bitter  bolus.  Unless  our  poor  Friend  belong  to 
the  numerous  class  of  Incurables,  which  seems  not  likely,  5 
some  cure  will  doubtless  be  effected.  We  should  rather 
say  that  Legion,  or  the  Satanic  School,  was  now  pretty 
well  extirpated  and  cast  out,  but  next  to  nothing  intro- 
duced in  its  room ;  whereby  the  heart  remains,  for  the 
while,  in  a  quiet  but  no  comfortable  state.  10 

'  At  length,  after  so  much  roasting,'  thus  writes  our 
Autobiographer,  '  I  was  what  you  might  name  calcined. 
'  Pray  only  that  it  be  not  rather,  as  is  the  more  frequent 
'  issue,  reduced  to  a  caput-vwrtiimn  !  But  in  any  case, 
'  by  mere  dint  of  practice,  I  had  grown  familiar  with  1 5 
'  many  things.  Wretchedness  was  still  wretched ;  but  I 
'  could  now  partly  see  through  it,  and  despise  it.  Which 
'  highest  mortal,  in  this  inane  Existence,  had  I  not  found 
'  a  Shadow-hunter,  or  Shadow-hunted  ;  and,  when  I  looked 
'  through  his  brave  garnitures,  miserable  enough  ?  Thy  20 
'  wishes  have  all  been  sniffed  aside,  thought  I  :  but  what, 
'  had  they  even  been  all  granted !  Did  not  the  Boy 
'  Alexander  weep  because  he  had  not  two  Planets  to 
'  conquer ;  or  a  whole  Solar  System ;  or  after  that,  a 
'whole  Universe?  Ach  Gott,  when  I  gazed  into  these  25 
'  Stars,  have  they  not  looked-down  on  me  as  if  with  pity, 
'from  their  serene  spaces;  like  Eyes  glistening  with 
'  heavenly  tears  over  the  little  lot  of  man !  Thousands 
'of  human  generations,  all  as  noisy  as  our  own,  have  been 
'  swallowed-up  of  Time,  and  there  remains  no  wreck  of  30 
'  them  any  more ;  and  Arcturus  and  Orion  and  Sirius  and 
'  the  Pleiades  are  still  shining  in  their  courses,  clear  and 
'young,  as  when  the  Shepherd  first  noted  them  in  the 
'  plain  of  Shinar.     Pshaw  !  what  is  this  paltry  little  Dog- 


1 66  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

'cage  of  an  Earth;  what  art  thou  that  sittest  whining 
'  there  ?  Thou  art  still  Nothing,  Nobody  :  true  ;  but  who, 
'  then,  is  Something,  Somebody  ?  For  thee  the  Family  of 
'  Man  has  no  use ;  it  rejects  thee ;  thou  art  wholly  as  a 
'  dissevered  limb  :  so  be  it ;  perhaps  it  is  better  so  ! ' 

Too-heavy-laden  Teufelsdrockh  ?  Vet  surely  his  bands 
are  loosening ;  one  day  he  will  hurl  the  burden  far  from 
him,  and  bound  forth  free  and  with  a  second  youth. 

'This,'  says  our  Professor,  'was  the  Centre  of  Indif- 
'  FERENCE  I  had  now  reached ;  through  which  whoso 
'travels  from  the  Negative  Pole  to  the  Positive  must 
'  necessarily  pass.' 


CHAPTER    IX. 


THE    EVERLASTING    YEA. 


'  Temptations  in  the  Wilderness  ! '  exclaims  Teufels- 
drockh :  '  Have  we  not  all  to  be  tried  with  such  ?  Not 
so  easily  can  the  old  Adam,  lodged  in  us  by  birth,  be 
dispossessed.  Our  Life  is  compassed  round  with  Neces- 
sity; yet  is  the  meaning  of  Life  itself  no  other  than 
Freedom,  than  Voluntary  Force  :  thus  have  we  a  war- 
fare ;  in  the  beginning,  especially,  a  hard-fought  battle. 
For  the  God-given  mandate.  Work  thou  in  Welldoing^  lies 
mysteriously  written,  in  Promethean  Prophetic  Charac- 
ters, in  our  hearts  ;  and  leaves  us  no  rest,  night  or  day, 
till  it  be  deciphered  and  obeyed;  till  it  burn  forth,  in 
our  conduct,  a  visible,  acted  Gospel  of  Freedom.  And 
as  the  clay-given  mandate.  Eat  thou  a?id  be  filled^  at  the 
same  time  persuasively  proclaims  itself  through  every 
nerve,  —  must  there  not  be  a  confusion,  a  contest,  before 
the  better  Influence  can  become  the  upper  ? 


THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  167 

'  To  me  nothing  seems  more  natural  than  that  the  Son 
of  Man,  when  such  God-given  mandate  first  prophetically 
stirs  within  him,  and  the  Clay  must  now  be  vanquished 
or  vanquish,  —  should  be  carried  of  the  spirit  into  grim 
Solitudes,  and  there  fronting  the  Tempter  do  grimmest  5 
battle  with  him  ;  defiantly  setting  him  at  naught,  till  he 
yield  and  fly.  Name  it  as  we  choose  :  with  or  without 
visible  Devil,  whether  in  the  natural  Desert  of  rocks  and 
sands,  or  in  the  populous  moral  Desert  of  selfishness 
and  baseness,  —  to  such  Temptation  are  we  all  called.  10 
Unhappy  if  we  are  not !  Unhappy  if  we  are  but  Half- 
men,  in  whom  that  divine  handwriting  has  never  blazed 
forth,  all-subduing,  in  true  sun-splendour;  but  quivers 
dubiously  amid  meaner  lights :  or  smoulders,  in  dull 
pain,  in  darkness,  under  earthly  vapours  !  —  Our  Wilder-  15 
ness  is  the  wide  World  in  an  Atheistic  Century;  our 
Forty  Days  are  long  years  of  suffering  and  fasting : 
nevertheless,  to  these  also  comes  an  end.  Yes,  to  me 
also  was  given,  if  not  Victory,  yet  the  consciousness  of 
Battle,  and  the  resolve  to  persevere  therein  while  life  or  20 
faculty  is  left.  To  me  also,  entangled  in  the  enchanted 
forests,  demon-peopled,  doleful  of  sight  and  of  sound,  it 
was  given,  after  weariest  wanderings,  to  work  out  my 
way  into  the  higher  sunlit  slopes  —  of  that  Mountain 
which  has  no  summit,  or  whose  summit  is  in  Heaven  25 
only ! ' 

He  says  elsewhere,  under  a  less  ambitious  figure  ;  as 
figures  are,  once  for  all,  natural  to  him :  '  Has  not  thy 
'  Life  been  that  of  most  sufficient  men  {tiichtigcn  Manner^ 
'thou  hast  known  in  this  generation?  An  outflush  of  30 
'foolish  young  Enthusiasm,  like  the  first  fallow-crop, 
'  wherein  are  as  many  weeds  as  valuable  herbs  :  this  all 
'parched  away,  under  the  Droughts  of  practical  and 
'  spiritual  Unbelief,  as  Disappointment,  in  thought  and 


1 68  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  act,  often-repeated  gave  rise  to  Doubt,  and  Doubt  gradu- 
'  ally  settled  into  Denial !  If  I  have  had  a  second-crop, 
'  and  now  see  the  perennial  greensward,  and  sit  under 
'  umbrageous  cedars,  which  defy  all  Drought  (and  Doubt) ; 
5  '  herein  too,  be  the  Heavens  praised,  I  am  not  without 
'  examples,  and  even  exemplars.' 

So  that,  for  Teufelsdrockh  also,  there  has  been  a  '  glori- 
ous revolution  : '  these  mad  shadow-hunting  and  shadow- 
hunted  Pilgrimings  of  his  were  but  some  purifying  '  Temp- 

10  tation  in  the  Wilderness,'  before  his  apostolic  work  (such 
as  it  was)  could  begin ;  which  Temptation  is  now  happily 
over,  and  the  Devil  once  more  worsted !  Was  '  that  high 
moment  in  the  Rue  deV Enfer,^  then,  properly  the  turning- 
point  of  the  battle ;  when  the  Fiend  said,   Wo7'ship  me^  or 

15  be  torn  in  sJweds;  and  was  answered  valiantly  with  an 
Apage  Satana  ?  —  Singular  Teufelsdrockh,  would  thou 
hadst  told  thy  singular  story  in  plain  words  !  But  it  is 
fruitless  to  look  there,  in  those  Paper-bags,  for  such. 
Nothing  but  innuendoes,  figurative  crotchets  :  a  typical 

20  Shadow,  fitfully  wavering,  prophetico-satiric ;  no  clear 
logical  Picture.  '  How  paint  to  the  sensual  eye,'  asks 
he  once,  'what  passes  in  the  Holy-of-Holies  of  Man's 
'  Soul ;  in  what  words,  known  to  these  profane  times, 
'  speak  even  afar-of¥  of  the  unspeakable  "i '      We  ask  in 

25  turn :  Why  perplex  these  times,  profane  as  they  are,  with 
needless  obscurity,  by  omission  and  by  commission  ? 
Not  mystical  only  is  our  Professor,  but  whimsical ;  and 
involves  himself,  now  more  than  ever,  in  eye-bewildering 
chiaroscuro.    Successive  glimpses,  here  faithfully  imparted, 

30  our  more  gifted  readers  must  endeavour  to  combine  for 
their  own  behoof. 

He  says  :  '  The  hot  Harmattan  wind  had  raged  itself 
'  out ;  its  howl  went  silent  within  me  ;  and  the  long- 
'  deafened  soul  could  now  hear.     I  paused  in  my  wild 


THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  169 

'  wanderings  ;   and  sat  me  down  to  wait,  and  consider ; 
'  for  it  was  as  if  the  hour  of  change  drew  nigh.     I  seemed 
'  to  surrender,  to  renounce  utterly,  and  say :    Fly,  then, 
'  false  shadows  of  Hope ;  I  will  chase  you  no  more,  I  will 
'believe  you  no  more.     And  ye  too, haggard  spectres  of    5 
'  Fear,  I  care  not  for  you  ;  ye  too  are  all  shadows  and  a 
'  lie.     Let  me  rest  here :    for  I   am  way-weary  and  life-  ^ 
'  weary  ;    I  will  rest  here,  were  it  but  to  die  :  to  die  or  to 
'live  is  alike  to  me;    alike  insignificant.'  —  And  again: 
'  Here,  then,  as  I  lay  in  that  Centre  of  Indifference  ;  10 
'  cast,   doubtless  by   benignant   upper   Influence,   into   a 
'  healing  sleep,  the  heavy  dreams  rolled  gradually  away, 
'  and  I  awoke  to  a  new  Heaven  and  a  new  Earth.     The 
'  first  preliminary  moral  Act,  Annihilation  of  Self  {Sebst- 
^  todtung),    had    been    happily    accomplished;     and    my  15 
'  mind's  eyes  were  now  unsealed,  and  its  hands  ungyved.' 

Might  we  not  also  conjecture  that  the  following  pas- 
sage refers   to   his   Locality,   during  this   same  '  healing 
sleep  ; '  that  his  Pilgrim-staff  lies  cast  aside  here,  on '  the 
high  table-land ; '   and  indeed  that  the  repose  is  already  20 
taking  wholesome  effect  on  him?     If  it  were  not  that  the 
tone,  in  some  parts,  has  more  of  riancy,  even  of  levity, 
than   we   could    have   expected !     However,   in   Teufels-"! 
drockh,   there    is    always    the   strangest    Dualism :    light  1| 
dancing,  with  guitar-music,  will  be  going  on  in  the  fore-  25 
court,  while  by  fits  from  within  comes  the  faint  whimper-  . 
ing  of  woe  and  wail.     We  transcribe  the  piece  entire  : 

'  Beautiful  it  was  to  sit  there,  as  in  my  skyey  Tent, 
'  musing  and  meditating ;  on  the  high  table-land,  in  front 
'  of  the  Mountains ;  over  me,  as  roof,  the  azure  Dome,  30 
'and  around  me,  for  walls,  four  azure-flowing  curtains, — 
'  namely,  of  the  Four  azure  Winds,  on  whose  bottom- 
'  fringes  also  I  have  seen  gilding.  And  then  to  fancy  the 
'  fair   Castles,    that    stood    sheltered   in   these   Mountain 


70 


S\l  A'  TO  A'   KESA  R  TUS. 


hollows  ;  with  their  green  flower-lawns,  and  white  dames 
and  damosels,  lovely  enough  :  or  better  still,  the  straw- 
roofed  Cottages,  wherein  stood  many  a  Mother  baking 
bread,  with  her  children  round  her  :  —  all  hidden  and 
protectingly  folded-up  in  the  valley-folds ;  yet  there  and 
alive,  as  sure  as  if  I  beheld  them.  Or  to  see,  as  well  as 
fancy,  the  nine  Towns  and  Villages,  that  lay  round  my 
mountain-seat,  which,  in  still  weather,  were  wont  to 
speak  to  me  (by  their  steeple-bells)  with  metal  tongue  ; 
and,  in  almost  all  weather,  proclaimed  their  vitality  by 
repeated  Smoke-clouds  ;  whereon,  as  on  a  culinary  horo- 
logue,  I  might  read  the  hour  of  the  day.  For  it  was  the 
smoke  of  cookery,  as  kind  housewives  at  morning,  mid- 
day, eventide,  were  boiling  their  husbands'  kettles ;  and 
ever  a  blue  pillar  rose  up  into  the  air,  successively  or 
simultaneously,  from  each  of  the  nine,  saying,  as  plainly 
as  smoke  could  say  :  Such  and  such  a  meal  is  getting 
ready  here.  Not  uninteresting  !  For  you  have  the 
whole  Borough,  with  all  its  love-makings  and  scandal- 
mongeries,  contentions  and  contentments,  as  in  minia- 
ture, and  could  cover  it  all  with  your  hat.  —  If,  in  my 
wide  Wayfarings,  I  had  learned  to  look  into  the  business 
of  the  World  in  its  details,  here  perhaps  was  the  place 
for  combining  it  into  general  propositions,  and  deducing 
inferences  therefrom. 

'  Often  also  could  I  see  the  black  Tempest  marching 
in  anger  through  the  distance  :  round  some  Schreck- 
horn,  as  yet  grim-blue,  would  the  eddying  vapour  gather, 
and  there  tumultuously  eddy,  and  flow  down  like  a  mad 
witch's  hair  ;  till,  after  a  space,  it  vanished,  and,  in  the 
clear  sunbeam,  your  Schreckhorn  stood  smiHng  grim- 
white,  for  the  vapour  had  held  snow.  How  thou  fer- 
mentest  and  elaboratest  in  thy  great  fermenting-vat  and 
laboratory  of  an  Atmosphere,  of  a  World,  O  Nature  !  — 


THE   EVERLASTING    YEA. 


171 


Or  what  is  Nature?  Ha !  why  do  I  not  name  thee  God? 
Art  thou  not  the  "  Living  Garment  of  God"?  O  Heav- 
ens, is  it,  in  very  deed,  He,  then,  that  ever  speaks  through 
thee ;  that  Hves  and  loves  in  thee,  that  lives  and  loves 


m  me  i  5 

'  Fore-shadows,  call  them  rather  fore-splendours,  of  that 
Truth,  and  Beginning  of  Truths,  fell  mysteriously  over 
my  soul.  Sweeter  than  Dayspring  to  the  Shipwrecked 
in  Nova  Zembla  ;  ah,  like  the  mother's  voice  to  her 
little  child  that  strays  bewildered,  weeping,  in  unknown  10 
tumults  ;  like  soft  streamings  of  celestial  music  to  my 
too-exasperated  heart,  came  that  Evangel.  The  Uni- 
verse is  not  dead  and  demoniacal,  a  charnel-house  with 
spectres  ;  but  godlike,  and  my  Father's  ! 

'  With  other  eyes,  too,  could  I  now  look  upon  my  fellow  15 
man :    with   an   infinite   Love,   an   infinite    Pity.     Poor, 
wandering,  wayward    man !      Art    thou    not    tried,  and 
beaten  with  stripes,  even  as  I  am  ?     Ever,  whether  thou 
bear  the  royal  mantle  or  the  beggar's  gabardine,  art  thou 
not  so  weary,  so  heavy-laden ;  and  thy  Bed  of  Rest  is  20 
but  a  Grave.     O  my  Brother,  my  Brother,  why  cannot  I 
shelter  thee  in  my  bosom,  and  wipe  away  all  tears  from 
thy  eyes  !  —  Truly,  the  din  of  many-voiced  Life,  which, 
in  this  solitude,  with  the  mind's  organ,  I  could  hear, 
was  no  longer  a  maddening  discord,  but  a  melting  one ;  25 
like  inarticulate  cries,  and  sobbings  of  a  dumb  creature, 
which  in   the  ear  of  Heaven   are  prayers.     The  poor 
Earth,  with  her  poor  joys,  was  now  my  needy  Mother, 
not  my  cruel  Stepdame ;  Man,  with  his  so  mad  Wants 
and  so  mean  Endeavours,  had  become  the  dearer  to  me  ;  30 
and  even  for  his   sufferings   and   his  sins,  I  now  first 
named  him  Brother.     Thus  was  I  standing  in  the  porch 
of  that  '''' SaJictnary  of  Sorrow ;^^  by  strange,  steep  ways, 
had  I  too  been  guided  thither ;    and  ere  long  its  sacred 


1^2  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  gates  would  open,  and  the  ''Divine  Depth  of  Sorrow  "  lie 

'  disclosed  to  me.' 

The  Professor  says,  he  here  first  got  eye  on  the  Knot 

that  had  been  strangling  him,  and  straightway  could  un- 
5  fasten  it,  and  was  free.  'A  vain  interminable  contro- 
versy,' writes  he,  'touching  what  is  at  present  called 
Origin  of  Evil,  or  some  such  thing,  arises  in  every  soul, 
since  the  beginning  of  the  world  ;  and  in  every  soul, 
that  would  pass  from  idle  Suffering  into  actual  Endeav- 
ouring, must  first  be  put  an  end  to.  The  most,  in  our 
time,  have  to  go  content  with  a  simple,  incomplete 
enough  Suppression  of  this  controversy ;  to  a  few,  some 
Solution  of  it  is  indispensable.  |  In  every  new  era,  too,  \ 
such  Solution  comes-out  in  different  terms ;  and  ever  ' 
the  Solution  of  the  last  era  has  become  obsolete,  and  is 
found  unserviceable.  For  it  is  man's  nature  to  change 
his  Dialect  from  century  to  century ;  he  cannot  help  it  ^ 
though  he  would.  The  authentic  Chw'ch- Catechism  of 
our  present  century  has  not  yet  fallen  into  my  hands : 
meanwhile,  for  my  own  private  behoof,  I  attempt  to 
elucidate  the  matter  so.  '  Man's  Unhappiness,  as  I  con- 
strue, comes  of  his  Greatness ;  it  is  because  there  is  an 
Infinite  in  him,  which  with  all  his  cunning  he  cannot 
quite  bury  under  the  Finite.  Will  the  whole  Finance 
Ministers  and  Upholsterers  and  Confectioners  of  mod- 
ern Europe  undertake,  in  joint-stock  company,  to  make 
one  Shoeblack  happy  t  They  cannot  accomplish  it, 
above  an  hour  or  two :  for  the  Shoeblack  also  has  a 
Soul  quite  other  than  his  Stomach  ;  and  would  require, 
if  you  consider  it,  for  his  permanent  satisfaction  and 
saturation,  simply  this  allotment,  no  more,  and  no  less  : 
God^s  infinite  Unive7-se  altogether  to  himselfi  therein  to 
enjoy  infinitely,  and  fill  every  wish  as  fast  as  it  rose. 
Oceans  of  Hochheimer,  a  Throat  like  that  of  Ophiuchus  : 


THE   EVERLASTING    YEA, 


173 


speak  not  of  them  ;  to  the  infinite  Shoeblack  they  are  as 
nothing.     No  sooner  is  your  ocean  filled,  than  he  grum- 
bles that  it  might  have  been  of  better  vintage.    Try  him 
with  half  of  a  Universe,  of  an  Omnipotence,  he  sets  to 
quarrelling  with  the  proprietor  of  the  other  half,  and  de-    5 
clares  himself  the  most  maltreated  of  men.  —  Always""? 
there  is  a  black  spot  in  our  sunshine :   it  is  even,  as  I    I 
said,  the  Shadow  of  Ourselves.  ^ 

'  But  the  whim  we  have  of   Happiness  is  somewhat 
thus.     By  certain  valuations,  and  averages,  of  our  own  10 
striking,  we  come  upon  some  sort  of  average  terrestrial 
lot ;  this  we  fancy  belongs  to  us  by  nature,  and  of  inde- 
feasible right.     It  is  simple  payment  of  our  wages,  of 
our    deserts ;    requires   neither   thanks   nor  complaint ; 
only  such  overplus  as  there  may  be  do  we  account  Hap-  15 
piness  ;  any  deficit  again  is  Misery.     Now  consider  that 
we  have  the  valuation  of  our  own  deserts  ourselves,  and 
what  a  fund  of  Self-conceit  there  is  in  each  of  us,  —  do 
you  wonder  that  the  balance  should  so   often  dip  the 
wrong  way,  and  many  a  Blockhead  cry :  See  there,  what  20 
a  payment ;    was  ever  worthy  gentleman  so  used  !  —  I 
tell  thee.  Blockhead,  it  all  comes  of  thy  Vanity ;  of  what 
thou  fanciest  those  same  deserts  of  thine  to  be.     Fancy 
that  thou   deservest  to  be  hanged  (as  is  most  likely), 
thou  wilt  feel  it  happiness  to  be  only  shot :    fancy  that  25 
thou  deservest  to  be  hanged  in  a  hair-halter,  it  will  be  a 
luxury  to  die  in  hemp.  "^  ' 

'  So  true  it  is,  what  I  then  said,  that  the  Fraction  of  Life      v    / 
can  be  increased  in  value  not  so  jnuch  by  increasing  your  j 
Niwierator  as  by  lessening  your  Denonwiator.     Nay,  un-  J30 
less  my  Algebra   deceive  me,    U?iity  itself    divided    by 
Zero  will  give  Infinity.     Make  thy  claim  of  wages  a  zero, 
then ;  thou  hast  the  world  under  thy  feet.     Well  did  the 
Wisest  of  our  time  write  :  "  It  is  only  with  Renunciation 


174 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


{Entsagcji)  that  Life,  properly  speaking,  can  be  said  to 
begin." 

'  I  asked  myself :  What  is  this  that,  ever  since  earliest 
years,  thou  hast  been  fretting  and  fuming,  and  lament- 
ing and  self-tormenting,  on  account  of  ?  Say  it  in  a 
word :  is  it  not  because  thou  art  not  happy  ?  Because 
the  Thou  (sweet  gentleman)  is  not  sufficiently  honoured, 
nourished,  soft-bedded,  and  lovingly  cared-for  ?  Foolish 
soul !  What  Act  of  Legislature  was  there  that  thou 
shouldst  be  Happy?  A  little  while  ago 'thou  hadst  no 
right  to  be  at  all.  What  if  thou  wert  born  and  pre- 
destined not  to  be  Happy,  but  to  be  Unhappy !  Art 
thou  nothing  other  than  a  Vulture,  then,  that  fliest 
through  the  Universe  seeking  after  somewhat  to  eat; 
and  shrieking  dolefully  because  carrion  enough  is  not 
given  thee?     Close  thy  ^j7w^/  open  thy  6^^^///^.' 

'  Es  leuchtet  mir  ein,  I  see  a  glimpse  of  it !  '  cries  he 
elsewhere :  '  there  is  in  man  a  Higher  than  Love  of 
'  Happiness :  he  can  do  without  Happiness,  and  instead 
20  '  thereof  find  Blessedness  !  Was  it  not  to  preach-forth 
'  this  same  Higher  that  sages  and  martyrs,  the  Poet  and 
'  the  Priest,  in  all  times,  have  spoken  and  suffered ;  bear- 

*  ing  testimony,  through  life  and  through  death,  of  the 

*  Godlike  that   is   in  Man,  and   how  in  the  Godlike  only 
25  *  has  he   Strength   and   Freedom  ?     Which   God-inspired 

*  Doctrine    art   thou    also    honoured    to   be    taught ;    O 

*  Heavens  !  and  broken  with  manifold  merciful  Afflic- 
'  tions,  even  till  thou  become  contrite,  and  learn  it !  O, 
'  thank  thy  Destiny  for  these ;  thankfully  bear  what  yet 

30  '  remain  :  thou  hadst  need  of  them  ;  the  Self  in  thee 
'  needed  to  be  annihilated.  By  benignant  fever-parox- 
'  ysms  is  Life  rooting  out  the  deep-seated  chronic  Dis- 
'  ease,  and  triumphs  over  Death.  On  the  roaring  billows 
'  of   Time,  thou   art   not   engulfed,    but   borne   aloft   into 


THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  175 

'  the  azure  of  Eternity.     Love  not  Pleasure  ;  love  God.  j 
'  This  is  the  Everlasting  Yea,  wherein  all  contradiction  1 
'  issolved:  wherein  whoso  walks  and  works,  it  is  well  with 
'  him.' 

And  again :    '  Small  is  it  that  thou  canst  trample  the    5 

*  Earth  with  its  injuries  under  thy  feet,  as  old  Greek 
'  Zeno  trained  thee :  thou  canst  love  the  Earth  while  it 
'  injures  thee,  and  even  because  it  injures  thee  ;  for  this 
'  a  Greater  than  Zeno  was  needed,  and  he  too  was  sent. 

'  Knowest    thou     that    '*  Worship    of    Sorrow "  ?       The  10 

*  Temple  thereof,  founded  some  eighteen  centuries  ago, 
'  now  lies  in  ruins,  overgrown  with  jungle,  the  habitation 
'  of  doleful  creatures  :  nevertheless,  venture  forward ;  in 
'  a  low  crypt,  arched  out  of  falling  fragments,  thou  findest 
'the  Altar  still  there,  and  its  sacred  Lamp  perennially  15 
'  burning.' 

Without  pretending  to  comment  on  which  strange 
utterances,  the  Editor  will  only  remark,  that  there  lies 
beside  them  much  of  a  still  more  questionable  character ; 
unsuited  to  the  general  apprehension ;  nay,  wherein  he  20 
himself  does  not  see  his  way.  Nebulous  disquisitions  on 
Religion,  yet  not  without  bursts  of  splendour;  on  the 
'perennial  continuance  of  Inspiration';  on  Prophecy; 
that  there  are  '  true  Priests,  as  well  as  Baal-Priests,  in 
our  own  day:'  with  more  of  the  like  sort.  We  select  25 
some  fractions,  by  way  of  finish  to  this  farrago. 

'  Cease,  my  much-respected  Herr  von  Voltaire,'  thus 
apostrophises  the  Professor  :  '  shut  thy  sweet  voice  ;  for 
'  the  task  appointed  thee  seems  finished.  Sufficiently 
'  hast  thou  demonstrated  this  proposition,  considerable  or  30 
'  otherwise :  That  the  Mythus  of  the  Christian  Religion 
'  looks  not  in  the  eighteenth  century  as  it  did  in  the 
'  eighth.  Alas,  were  thy  six-and-thirty  quartos,  and  the 
'  six-and-thirty  thousand  other  quartos  and  folios,  and  fly- 


76 


SA  A'  TO  A'   KESA  R  TUS. 


ing  sheets  or  reams,  printed  before  and  since  on  the 
same  subject,  all  needed  to  convince  us  of  so  little  ! 
But  what  next  ?  Wilt  thou  help  us  to  embody  the 
divine  Spirit  of  that  Religion  in  a  new  Mythus,  in  a  new 
vehicle  and  vesture,  that  our  Souls,  otherwise  too  like 
perishing,  may  live  ?  What !  thou  hast  no  faculty  in 
that  kind  ?     Only  a  torch  for  burning,  no  hammer  for 

building  ?     Take    our    thanks,    then,    and  thyself 

away. 

'  Meanwhile  what  are  antiquated  Mythuses  to  me  ?  Or 
is  the  God  present,  felt  in  my  own  heart,  a  thing  which 
Herr  von  Voltaire  will  dispute  out  of  me  ;  or  dispute 
into  me?  To  the  ^^  Worship  of  Sorrow'^  ascribe  what 
origin  and  genesis  thou  pleasest,  has  not  that  Worship 
originated,  and  been  generated  ;  is  it  not  here  ?  Feel  it 
in  thy  heart,  and  then  say  whether  it  is  of  God !  This 
is  Belief ;  all  else  is  Opinion,  —  for  which  latter  whoso 
will,  let  him  worry  and  be  worried.' 

'  Neither,'  observes  he  elsewhere,  '  shall  ye  tear-out 
©ne  another's  eyes,  struggling  over  "  Plenary  Inspira- 
tion," and  such-like  :  try  rather  to  get  a  little  even 
Partial  Inspiration,  each  of  you  for  himself.  One  Bible 
I  know,  of  whose  Plenary  Inspiration  doubt  is  not  so 
much  as  possible ;  nay  with  my  own  eyes  I  saw  the 
God's-Hand  writing  it :  thereof  all  other  Bibles  are  but 
Leaves,  —  say,  in  Picture- Writing  to  assist  the  weaker 
faculty.' 

Or  to  give  the  wearied  reader  relief,  and,  bring  it  to  an 
end,  let  him  take  the  following  perhaps  more  intelligible 
30  passage  : 

'  To  me,  in  this  our  life^'  says  the  Professor,  '  which 
*  is  an  internecine  warfare  with  the  Time-spirit,  other 
'  warfare  seems  questionable.  Hast  thou  in  any  way  a 
'  Contention  with  thy  brother,  I  advise  thee,  think  well 


THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  177 

what  the  meaning  thereof  is.  If  thou  gauge  it  to  the 
bottom,  it  is  simply  this  :  "  Fellow,  see  !  thou  art  taking 
more  than  thy  share  of  Happiness  in  the  world,  some- 
thing from  my  share  :  which,  by  the  Heavens,  thou  shalt 
not;  nay,  I  will  fight  thee  rather."  —  Alas,  and  the  5 
whole  lot  to  be  divided  is  such  a  beggarly  matter,  truly 
a ''feast  of  shells,"  for  the  substance  has  been  spilled 
out :  not  enough  to  quench  one  Appetite ;  and  the  col- 
lective human  species  clutching  at  them  !  —  Can  we  not, 
in  all  such  cases,  rather  say  :  "  Take  it,  thou  too-rave-  10 
nous  individual;  take  that  pitiful  additional  fraction  of  a 
share,  which  I  reckoned  mine,  but  which  thou  so  want- 
est ;  take  it  with  a  blessing :  would  to  Heaven  I  had 
enough  for  thee  !  "  —  If  Fichte's  WissenschaftsleJwe  be, 
"to  a  certain  extent.  Applied  Christianity,"  surely  to  a  15 
still  greater  extent,  so  is  this.  We  have  here  not  a 
Whole  Duty  of  Man,  yet  a  Half  Duty,  namely,  the  Pas- 
sive half :  could  we  but  do  it,  as  we  can  demonstrate  it ! 

'  But  indeed  Conviction,  were  it  never  so  excellent,  is 
worthless  till  it  convert  itself  into  Conduct.     Nay,  prop-  20 
erly  Conviction  is  not  possible  till  then  ;   inasmuch  as 
all  Speculation  is  by  nature  endless,  formless,  a  vortex 
amid  vortices  :  only  by   a  felt  indubitable  certainty  of 
Experience  does  it  find  any  centre  to  revolve  round,  and 
so  fashion   itself  into  a  system.     Most  true  is  it,  as  a  25 
wise  man  teaches  us,  that  ''  Doubt  of  any  sort  cannot 
be  removed  except  by  Action."     On  which  ground,  too, 
let  him  who  gropes  painfully  in  darkness  or  uncertain 
light,  and  prays  vehemently  that  the  dawn  may  ripen 
into  day,  lay  this  other  precept  well  to  heart,  which  to  30 
me  was  of  invaluable  service  :  "  Do  the  Duty  ivhich  lies 
7iearest  thee,'"  which  thou  knowest  to  be  a  Duty  !     Thy 
second  Duty  will  already  have  become  clearer. 

'  May  we  not  say,  however,  that  the  hour  of  Spiritual 


7 8  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

Enfranchisement  is  even  this :  When  your  Ideal  World, 
wherein  the  whole  man  has  been  dimly  struggling  and 
inexpressibly  languishing  to  work,  becomes  revealed 
and  thrown  open  ;  and  you  discover,  with  amazement 
enough,  like  the  Lothario  in  Wil/ieh?i  Meister,  that  your 
"America  is  here  or  nowhere"?  The  Situation  that 
has  not  its  Duty,  its  Ideal,  was  never  yet  occupied  by 
man.  Yes  here,  in  this  poor,  miserable,  hampered,  des- 
picable Actual,  wherein  thou  even  now  standest,  here  or 
nowhere  is  thy  Ideal :  work  it  out  therefrom  ;  and  work- 
ing, believe,  live,  be  free.  Fool !  the  Ideal  is  in  thyself, 
the  impediment  too  is  in  thyself  :  thy  Condition  is  but 
the  sfuff  thou  art  to  shape  that  same  Ideal  out  of  :  what 
matters  whether  such  stuff  be  of  this  sort  or  that,  so  the 
Form  thou  give  it  be  heroic,  be  poetic?  O  thou  that 
pinest  in  the  imprisonment  of  the  Actual,  and  criest  bit- 
terly to  the  gods  for  a  kingdom  wherein  to  rule  and 
create,  know  this  of  a  truth  :  the  thing  thou  seekest  is 
already  with  thee,  "  here  or  nowhere,"  couldst  thou  only 
see  ! 

'  But  it  is  with  man's  Soul  as  it  was  with  Nature  :  the 
beginning  of  Creation  is  —  Light.  Till  the  eye  have 
vision,  the  whole  members  are  in  bonds.  Divine  mo- 
ment, when  over  the  tempest-tost  Soul,  as  once  over  the 
wild-weltering  Chaos,  it  is  spoken  :  Let  there  be  light ! 
Ever  to  the  greatest  that  has  felt  such  moment,  is  it  not 
miraculous  and  God-announcing;  even  as,  under  sim- 
pler figures,  to  the  simplest  and  least.  The  mad  prime- 
val Discord  is  hushed ;  the  rudely-jumbled  conflicting 
elements  bind  themselves  into  separate  Firmaments : 
deep  silent  rock-foundations  are  built  beneath ;  and  the 
skyey  vault  with  its  everlasting  Luminaries  above  :  in- 
stead of  a  dark  wasteful  Chaos,  we  have  a  blooming, 
fertile,  Heaven-encompassed  World. 


PA  USE. 


79 


'  I  too  could  now  say  to  myself  :  Be  no  longer  a  Chaos, 
'  but  a  World,  or  even  Worldkin.  Produce  !  Produce ! 
'  Were  it  but  the  pitifullest  infinitesimal  fraction  of  a 
*  Product,  produce  it,  in  God's  name  !  'Tis  the  utmost 
'  thou  hast  in  thee  :  out  with  it,  then.  Up,  up  !  Whatso- 
'  ever  thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy  whole  might. 
'Work  while  it  is  called  Today;  for  the  Night  cometh, 
'wherein  no  man  can  work.' 


CHAPTER    X. 


PAUSE. 


Thus  have  we,  as  closely  and  perhaps  satisfactorily 
as,  in   such   circumstances,  might  be,  followed  Teufels-  lo 
drockh  through  the  various  successive  states  and  stages 
of  Growth,   Entanglement,  Unbelief,  and  almost  Repro- 
bation, into  a  certain  clearer  state   of  what  he  himself 
seems  to  consider  as  Conversion.     '  Blame  not  the  word, 
says   he;    'rejoice    rather   that   such  a  word,  signifying  15 
such  a  thing,  has   come  to  light   in   our  modern  Era, 
though   hidden  from    the   wisest   Ancients.      The  Old 
World  knew  nothing  of  Conversion  ;  instead  of  an  Ecce 
Homo,  they  had  only  some  Choice  of  Hercules.     It  was  a 
new-attained   progress    in    the    Moral    Development  of  20 
man  :   hereby  has  the  Highest  come  home  to  the  bosoms 
of  the  most  Limited ;  what  to  Plato  was  but  a  hallucina-  T 
tion,  and  to  Socrates  a  chimera,  is  now  clear  and  certain  \ 
to  your  Zinzendorfs,  your  Wesleys,  and  the  poorest  of 
their  Pietists  and  Methodists.'  25 

It  is  here,  then,  that  the  spiritual  majority  of  Teufels- 
drockh  commences  :  we  are  henceforth  to  see  him  '  work 


i«o 


SA  K  TOR   KESA  R  TUS. 


in  well-doing,'  with  the  spirit  and  clear  aims  of  a  Man. 
He  has  discovered  that  the  Ideal  Workshop  he  so  panted 
for  is  even  this  same  Actual  ill-furnished  Workshop  he 
has  so  long  been  stumbling  in.  He  can  say  to  himself : 
Tools?  Thou  hast  no  Tools?  Why,  there  is  not  a  Man, 
or  a  Thing,  now  alive  but  has  tools.  The  basest  of 
created  animalcules,  the  Spider  itself,  has  a  spinning- 
jenny,  and  warping-mill,  and  power-loom  within  its 
head  :  the  stupidest  of  Oysters  has  a  Papin's-Digester, 
with  stone-and-lime  house  to  hold  it  in  :  every  being 
that  can  live  can  do  something  :  this  let  him  do.  —  Tools  ? 
Hast  thou  not  a  Brain,  furnished,  furnishable  with  some 
gUmmerings  of  Light ;  and  three  fingers  to  hold  a  Pen 
withal?  Never  since  Aaron's  Rod  went  out  of  practice, 
or  even  before  it,  was  there  such  a  wonder-working 
Tool  :  greater  than  all  recorded  miracles  have  been 
performed  by  Pens.  For  strangely  in  this  so  solid- 
seeming  World,  which  nevertheless  is  in  continual  rest- 
less flux,  it  is  appointed  that  Sound,  to  appearance  the 
most  fleeting,  should  be  the  most  continuing  of  all 
things.  The  Word  is  well  said  to  be  omnipotent  in 
this  world  ;  man,  thereby  divine,  can  create  as  by  a  Fiat. 
Awake,  arise  !  Speak  forth  what  is  in  thee  ;  what  God 
has  given  thee,  what  the  Devil  shall  not  take  away. 
Higher  task  than  that  of  Priesthood  was  allotted  to  no 
man :  wert  thou  but  the  meanest  in  that  sacred  Hie- 
rarchy, is  it  not  honour  enough  therein  to  spend  and  be 
spent? 

'  By  this  Art,  which  whoso  will  may  sacrilegiously  de- 
grade into  a  handicraft/  adds  Teufelsdrockh,  '  have  I 
thenceforth  abidden.  Writings  of  mine,  not  indeed 
known  as  mine  (for  what  am  //),  have  fallen,  perhaps 
not  altogether  void,  into  the  mighty  seed-field  of  Opinion; 
fruits  of  my  unseen  sowing  gratifyingly  meet  me  here  and 


PAUSE.  i8i 

there.  I  thank  the  Heavens  that  I  have  now  found  my 
CalHng;  wherein,  with  or  without  perceptible  result,  I 
am  minded  diligently  to  persevere. 

'  Nay,  how  knowest  thou,'  cries  he,  '  but  this  and  the 
other   pregnant    Device,  now   grown   to   be  a  world-re-    5 
nowned   far-working  Institution ;    like   a  grain  of  right 
mustard-seed   once   cast   into    the    right   soil,    and   now 
stretching-out  strong  boughs  to  the  four  winds,  for  the 
birds  of  the  air  to   lodge  in,  —  may  have  been  properly 
my  doing?     Some  one's   doing,  it  without  doubt  was;  10 
from  some  Idea,  in  some  single   Head,  it  did  first  of  all 
take   beginning:    why  not  from   some   Idea  in  mine?' 
Does   Teufelsdrockh  here  glance  at  that  '  Society  for 
THE   Conservation   of    Property    {Eigenthums-co7iser- 
virende    Gesellschaft)^^    of    which    so    many    ambiguous  15 
notices    glide    spectre-lil^e    through    these    inexpressible 
Paper-bags  ?      '  An  Institution/  hints  he,  '  not  unsuitable 
to  the  wants  of  the  time ;  as  indeed   such  sudden  exten- 
sion proves  :  for  already  can  the  Society  number,  among 
its  ofHce-bearers  or  corresponding  members,  the  highest  20 
Names,  if  not  the  highest  Persons,  in  Germany,  England, 
France ;  and  contributions,  both  of  money  and  of  medi- 
tation, pour  in  from  all  quarters ;  to,  if  possible,  enlist 
the  remaining  Integrity  of  the  world,  and,  defensively 
and  with  forethought,  marshal  it  round  this  Palladium.'  25 
Does  Teufelsdrockh   mean,  then,  to  give  himself  out  as 
the  originator  of  that  so  notable  Eigcnthu??is-conservirende 
('  Owndom-conserving ')  Gesellschaft ;  and,  if  so,  what,  in 
the    Devil's   name,   is   it  ?      He   again  hints  :  '  At  a  time 
when   the  divine   Commandment,    Thou  shalt  ?iot  steal,  30 
wherein  truly,  if  well  understood,  is  comprised  the  whole 
Hebrew   Decalogue,  with   Solon's   and  Lycurgus's  Con- 
stitutions, Justinian's  Pandects,  the  Code  Napoleon,  and 
all  Codes,  Catechisms,  Divinities,  Moralities  whatsoever, 


1 82  SARTOA'   RESARTUS. 

'  that  man  has  hitherto  devised  (and  enforced  with  Altar- 
'  fire  and  Gallows-ropes)  for  his  social  guidance :  at  a 
'  time,  I  say,  when  this  divine  Commandment  has  ail-but 
'  faded  away  from  the  general  remembrance ;  and,  with 
5  '  little  disguise,  a  new  opposite  Commandment,  Thou 
'  shalt  steal,  is  everywhere  promulgated,  —  it  perhaps 
'  behoved,  in  this  universal    dotage   and   deliration,  the 

*  sound  portion  of  mankind  to  bestir  themselves  and  rally. 

*  When  the  widest  and  wildest  violations  of  that  divine 
10  '  right  of  Property,  the  only  divine  right  now  extant  or 

'  conceivable,  are  sanctioned  and  recommended  by  a 
'  vicious  Press,  and  the  world  has  lived  to  hear  it  asserted 
'  that  we  have  no  Property  m  our  very  Bodies  bid  o?ily  an 
^  aceidental  Possession  and  Life-rent,  what  is  the  issue  to 

15  '  be  looked  for  ?  Hangmen  and  Catchpoles  may,  by  their 
'  noose-gins  and  baited  fall-trap§,  keep  down  the  smaller 
'  sort  of  vermin  ;  but  what,  except  perhaps  some  such 
'  Universal  Association,  can  protect  us  against  whole 
'  meat-devouring   and   man-devouring  hosts   of    Boa-con- 

20  '  strictors  ?  If,  therefore,  the  more  sequestered  Thinker 
'  have  wondered,  in  his  privacy,  from  what  hand  that  per- 
'  haps  not  ill-written  Prografn  in  the  Public  Journals,  with 
'  its  high  Prize-  Questions  and  so  liberal  Prizes,  could  have 
'proceeded, — let  him  now  cease  such  wonder;  and,  with 

25  '  undivided  faculty,  betake  himself  to  the  Concun-enz 
'  (Competition).' 

We  ask :  Has  this  same  *  perhaps  not  ill-written  Pro- 
gram,' or  any  other  authentic  Transaction  of  that  Prop- 
erty-conserving Society,  fallen  under  the  eye  of  the  British 

30  Reader,  in  any  Journal,  foreign  or  domestic  ?  If  so,  what 
are  those  Prize- Questions ;  what  are  the  terms  of  Compe- 
tition, and  when  and  where?  No  printed  Newspaper- 
leaf,  no  farther  light  of  any  sort,  to  be  met  with  in  these 
Paper-bags  !    Or  is  the  whole  business  one  other  of  those 


PAUSE.  183 

whimsicalities,  and  perverse  inexplicabilities,  whereby 
Herr  Teufelsdrockh,  meaning  much  or  nothing,  is  pleased 
so  often  to  play  fast-and-loose  with  us  ? 

Here,  indeed,  at  length,  must  the  Editor  give  utterance 
to  a  painful  suspicion,  which,  through  late  Chapters,  has    5 
begun  to  haunt  him  ;    paralysing   any  little  enthusiasm, 
that  might  still   have  rendered  his  thorny  Biographical 
task  a  labour  of  love.     It  is  a  suspicion  grounded  perhaps 
on  trifles,  yet  confirmed  almost  into  certainty  by  the  more 
and   more    discernible   humoristico-satirical    tendency  of  10 
Teufelsdrockh,  in  whom  underground   humours,  and  in- 
tricate sardonic  rogueries,  wdieel  wathin  wheel,  defy  all      \^ 
reckoning :  a  suspicion,  in  one  word,  that  these  Autobi-    \ 
ographical  Documents  are  partly  a  mystification  !     What     ' 
if  many  a  so-called  Fact  were  little  better  than  a  Fiction  ;  15 
if  here  we  had  no  direct  Camera-obscura   Picture  of  the 
Professor's  History  ;  but  only  some  more  or  less  fantastic 
Adumbration,  symbolically,  perhaps  significantly  enough, 
shadowing  forth   the   same  !     Our   theory    begins   to   be 
that,   in   receiving    as    literally    authentic   what  was   but  20 
hieroglyphically  so,  Hofrath   Heuschrecke,  whom  in  that 
case  we  scruple  not  to  name  Hofrath   Nose-of-Wax,  was 
made  a  fool  of,  and  set  adrift  to    make  fools  of  others. 
Could  it  be  expected,  indeed,  that  a   man  so  known  for 
impenetrable   reticence   as    Teufelsdrockh,    would   all   at  25 
once  frankly  unlock  his  private   citadel    to   an   English 
Editor  and  a  German   Hofrath ;    and   not  rather  decep- 
tively ///lock  both  Editor  and  Hofrath  in  the  labyrinthic 
tortuosities  and  covered-ways  of  said  citadel  (having  en- 
ticed them  thither),  to  see,  in  his  half-devilish  way,  how  30 
the  fools  would  look  ? 

Of  one  fool,  however,  the  Herr  Professor  will  perhaps 
find  himself  short.    On  a  small  slip,  formerly  thrown  aside 


1 84  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

as  blank,  the  ink  being  ail-but  invisible,  we  lately  notice, 
and  with  effort  decipher  the  following  :  '  What  are  your 
*  historical  Facts  ;  still  more  your  biographical  ?  Wilt 
'thou  know  a  Man,  above  all,  a  Mankind,  by  stringing- 
5  '  together  beadrolls  of  what  thou  namest  Facts  ?  The 
'  Man  is  the  spirit  he  worked  in ;  not  what  he  did,  but 
'  what  he  became.  Facts  are  engraved  Hierograms,  for 
'which  the  fewest  have  the  key.  And  then  how  your 
'  Blockhead  {Duvunkopf)  studies  not  their  Meaning ;  but 

1°  '  simply  whether  they  are  w^ell  or  ill  cut,  wdiat  he  calls 
'  Moral  or  Immoral !  Still  w^orse  is  it  with  your  Bungler 
'  {Pfiischer)  :  such  I  have  seen  reading  some  Rousseau, 
'  with  pretences  of  interpretation ;  and  mistaking  the  ill- 
'  cut  Serpent-of- Eternity  for  a  common  poisonous  Reptile.' 

15  Was  the  Professor  apprehensive  lest  an  Editor,  selected 
as  the  present  boasts  himself,  might  mistake  the  Teufels- 
drockh  Serpent-of- Eternity  in  like  manner  ?  For  wdiich 
reason  it  was  to  be  altered,  not  wdchout  underhand  satire, 
into  a  plainer  Symbol  ?     Or  is  this  merely  one  of  his  half- 

20  sophisms,  half-truisms,  which  if  he  can  but  set  on  the 
back  of  a  Figure,  he  cares  not  whither  it  gallop  ?  We 
say  not  with  certainty  ;  and  indeed,  so  strange  is  the 
Professor,  can  never  say.  If  our  Suspicion  be  wholly 
unfounded  let  his  own  questionable  w^ays,  not  our  neces- 

25  sary  circumspectness,  bear  the  blame. 

But  be  this  as  it  wdll,  the  somewhat  exasperated  and 
indeed  exhausted  Editor  determines  here  to  shut  these 
Paperbags,  for  the  present.  Let  it  suffice  that  we  know 
of  Teufelsdrockh,  so  far,  if  '  not  what  he  did,  yet  what  he 

30  became  : '  the  rather,  as  his  character  has  now^  taken  its 
ultimate  bent,  and  no  new  revolution,  of  importance,  is  to 
be  looked  for.  The  imprisoned  Chrysalis  is  now  a 
winged  Psyche :  and  such,  wheresoever  be  its  flight,  it 
will    continue.     To    trace    by   what   complex    gyrations 


FA  USE. 


'8S 


(flights  or  involuntary  waftings)  through  the  mere  ex- 
ternal Life-element,  Teufelsdrockh  reaches  his  University 
Professorship,  and  the  Psyche  clothes  herself  in  civic 
Titles,  without  altering  her  now  fixed  nature,  —  would  be 
comparatively  an  unproductive  task,  were  we  even  unsus-  5 
picious  of  its  being,  for  us  at  least,  a  false  and  impossible 
one.  His  outward  Biography,  therefore,  which,  at  the 
Blumine  Lover's-Leap,  we  saw  churned  utterly  into 
spray-vapour,  may  hover  in  that  condition,  for  aught  that 
concerns  us  here.  Enough  that  by  survey  of  certain  10 
'pools  and  plashes,'  we  have  ascertained  its  general 
direction  ;  do  we  not  already  know  that,  by  one  way  and 
other,  it  has  long  since  rained-down  again  into  a  stream ; 
and  even  now,  at  Weissnichtwo,  flows  deep  and  still, 
fraught  with  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes,  and  visible  to  15 
whoso  will  cast  eye  thereon  ?  Over  much  invaluable 
matter,  that  lies  scattered,  like  jewels  among  quarry-rub- 
bish, in  those  Paper-catacombs,  we  may  have  occasion  to 
glance  back,  and  somewhat  will  demand  insertion  at  the 
right  place :  meanwhile,  be  our  tiresome  diggings  therein  20 
suspended. 

If  now,  before  reopening  the  great  Clothes-  Volimie,  we 
ask  what  our  degree  of  progress,  during  these  Ten  Chap- 
ters, has  been,  towards  right  understanding  of  the  Clothes- 
Philosophy,  let  not  our  discouragement  become  total.  To  25. 
speak  in  that  old  figure  of  the  Hell-gate  Bridge  over 
Chaos,  a  few  flying  pontoons  have  perhaps  been  added, 
though  as  yet  they  drift  straggling  on  the  Flood  ;  how 
far  they  will  reach,  when  once  the  chains  are  straightened 
and  fastened,  can,  at  present,  only  be  matter  of  con-  30 
jecture. 

So  much  we  already  calculate  :  Through  many  a  little 
loophole,  we  have  had  glimpses  into  the  internal  world  of 
Teufelsdrockh  ;    his  strange   mystic,    almost  magic   Dia- 


1 86  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

gram  of  the  Universe,  and  how  it  was  gradually  drawn, 
is  not  henceforth  altogether  dark  to  us.  Those  mysteri- 
ous ideas  on  Time,  which  merit  consideration,  and  are 
not  wholly  unintelligible  with  such,  may  by  and  by  prove 
5  significant.  Still  more  may  his  somewhat  peculiar  view 
of  Nature ;  the  decisive  Oneness  he  ascribes  to  Nature. 
How  all  Nature  and  Life  are  but  one  Ga7'ment^  a  '  Living 
Garment,'  woven  and  ever  aweaving  in  the  '  Loom  of 
Time ; '    is    not   here,    indeed,    the    outline   of   a   whole 

10  Clothes- Philosophy ;  at  least  the  arena  it  is  to  work  in  ? 
Remark,  too,  that  the  Character  of  the  Man,  nowise  without 
meaning  in  such  a  matter,  becomes  less  enigmatic :  amid 
so  much  tumultuous  obscurity,  almost  like  diluted  mad- 
ness, do  not  a  certain  indomitable  Defiance  and  yet  a 

15  boundless  Reverence  seem  to  loom  forth,  as  the  two 
mountain-summits,  on  whose  rock-strata  all  the  rest  were 
based  and  built  ? 

Nay  further,   may    we    not    say  that    Teufelsdrockh's 
Biography,  allowing  it  even,  as  suspected,  only  a  hiero- 

20  glyphical  truth,  exhibits  a  man,  as  it  were  preappointed 

'  for  Clothes-Philosophy  t     To  look  through  the  Shows  of 

things  into  Things  themselves  he  is  led  and  compelled. 

The  '  Passivity '  given   him   by  birth   is  fostered  by  all 

turns  of  his  fortune.    Everywhere  cast  out,  like  oil  out  of 

25  water,  from  mingling  in  any  Employment,  in  any  public 
Communion,  he  has  no  portion  but  Solitude  and  a  life  of 
Meditation.  The  whole  energy  of  his  existence  is  di- 
rected, through  long  years,  on  one  task  :  that  of  enduring 
pain,  if  he  cannot  cure  it.  Thus  everywhere  do  the  Shows  of 

30  things  oppress  him,  withstand  him,  threaten  him  with  fear- 
fullest  destruction  :  only  by  victoriously  penetrating  into 
Things  themselves,  can  he  find  peace  and  a  stronghold.^ 
But  is  not  this  same  looking-through  the  Shows,  or  Vest- 
ures, into  the  Things,   even    the  first   preliminary  to  a 


PAUSE. 


87 


Philosophy  of  Clothes  ?  Do  we  not,  in  all  this,  discern 
some  beckonings  towards  the  true  higher  purport  of  such 
a  Philosophy ;  and  what  shape  it  must  assume  with  such 
a  man,  in  such  an  era  ? 

Perhaps  in  entering  on  Book  Third,  the  courteous 
Reader  is  not  utterly  without  guess  whither  he  is  bound : 
nor,  let  us  hope,  for  all  the  fantastic  Dream-Grottoes 
through  which,  as  is  our  lot  with  Teufelsdrockh,  he  must 
wander,  will  there  be  wanting  between  whiles  some 
twinkling  of  a  steady  Polar  Star. 


BOOK    III. 


CHAPTER    I. 


INCIDENT    IN    MODERN    HISTORY. 


As  a  wonder-loving  and  wonder-seeking  man,  Teufels- 
drockh,  from  an  early  part  of  this  Clothes- Volume,  has 
more  and  more  exhibited  himself.  Striking  it  was,  amid 
all  his  perverse  cloudiness,  with  what  force  of  vision  and 
5  of  heart  he  pierced  into  the  mystery  of  the  World ;  recog- 
nising in  the  highest  sensible  phenomena,  so  far  as  Sense 
went,  only  fresh  or  faded  Raiment ;  yet  ever,  under  this, 
a  celestial  Essence  thereby  rendered  visible :  and  while, 
on  the  one  hand,  he  trod   the  old  rags  of  Matter,  with 

10  their  tinsels,  into  the  mire,  he  on  the  other  everywhere 
exalted  Spirit  above  all  earthly  principalities  and  powers, 
and  worshipped  it,  though  under  the  meanest  shapes, 
with  a  true  Platonic  mysticism.  What  the  man  ulti- 
mately purposed  by  thus  casting  his  Greek-fire  into  the 

15  general  Wardrobe  of  the  Universe;  what  such,  more  or 
less  complete,  rending  and  burning  of  Garments  through- 
out the  whole  compass  of  Civilised  Life  and  Speculation, 
should  lead  to  :  the  rather  as  he  was  no  Adamite,  in  any 
sense,  and  could  not,  like  Rousseau,  recommend  either 

20  bodily  or  intellectual  Nudity,  and  a  return  to  the  savage 
state  :  all  this  our  readers  are  now  bent  to  discover ;  this 
is,   in  fact,    properly  the   gist   and   purport   of    Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's  Philosophy  of  Clothes. 
18S 


INCIDENT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY.  189 

Be  it  remembered,  however,  that  such  purport  is  here 
not  so  much  evolved,  as  detected  to  he  ready  for  evolving. 
We  are  to  guide  our  British  Friends  into  the  new  Gold- 
country,  and  shew  them  the  mines ;  nowise  to  dig-out 
and  exhaust  its  wealth,  which  indeed  remains  for  all  time  5 
inexhaustible.  Once  there,  let  each  dig  for  his  own  be- 
hoof, and  enrich  himself. 

Neither,  in  so  capricious  inexpressible  a  Work  as  this 
of  the  Professor's,  can  our  course  now  more  than  formerly 
be  straightforward,  step  by  step,  but  at  best  leap  by  leap.  10 
Significant  Indications  stand-out  here  and  there ;  which 
for  the  critical  eye,  that  looks  both  widely  and  narrowly, 
shape  themselves  into  some  ground-scheme  of  a  Whole : 
to  select  these  with  judgment,  so  that  a  leap  from  one  to 
the  other  be  possible,  and  (in  our  old  figure)  by  chaining  15 
them  together,  a  passable  Bridge  be  effected :  this,  as 
heretofore,  continues  our  only  method.  Among  such 
light-spots,  the  following,  floating  in  much  wild  matter 
about  Pe?'fectibility^  has  seemed  worth  clutching  at : 

'  Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  incident  in  Modern  His-  20 
'  tory,'  says  Teufelsdrockh,  '  is  not  the  Diet  of  Worms, 
'  still   less  the  Battle   of    Austerlitz,   Waterloo,    Peterloo, 
'  or  any  other  Battle  ;  but  an  incident  passed  carelessly 
*  over  by  most  Historians,  and  treated  with  some  degree 
'of  ridicule  by  others:  namely,  George  Fox's  making  to  25 
'  himself  a  suit  of  Leather.     This  man,  the  first  of  the 
'  Quakers,  and  by  trade  a  Shoemaker,  was  one  of  those, 
'  to  whom,  under  ruder  or  purer  form,  the  Divine  Idea  of 
'  the  Universe  is  pleased  to  manifest  itself ;  and,  across 
'  all  the  hulls  of  Ignorance  and  earthly  Degradation,  shine  30 
'  through,  in  unspeakable  Awfulness,  unspeakable  Beauty, 
'  on    their    souls :    who    therefore    are    rightly    accounted 
'  Prophets,    God-possessed ;    or  even   Gods,    as   in   some 
'  periods   it  has  chanced.      Sitting  in  his  stall ;  working 


190 


SARTOR  RESARTUS. 


on  tanned  hides,  amid  pincers,  paste-horns,  rosin,  swine- 
bristles,  and  a  nameless  flood  of  rubbish,  this  youth  had, 
nevertheless,  a  Living  Spirit  belonging  to  him ;  also  an 
antique  Inspired  Volume,  through  which,  as  through  a 
window,  it  could  look  upwards,  and  discern  its  celestial 
Home.  The  task  of  a  daily  pair  of  shoes,  coupled  even 
with  some  prospect  of  victuals,  and  an  honourable  Mas- 
tership in  Cordwainery,  and  perhaps  the  post  of  Third- 
borough  in  his  hundred,  as  the  crown  of  long  faithful 
sewing,  —  was  nowise  satisfaction  enough  to  such  a 
mind :  but  ever  amid  the  boring  and  hammering  came 
tones  from  that  far  country,  came  Splendours  and  Ter- 
rors ;  for  this  poor  Cordwainer,  as  we  said,  was  a  Man  ; 
and  the  Temple  of  Immensity,  wherein  as  man  he  had 
been  sent  to  minister,  was  full  of  holy  mystery  to  him. 

'  The  Clergy  of  the  neighbourhood,  the  ordained  Watch- 
ers and  Interpreters  of  that  same  holy  mystery,  listened 
with  unaffected  tedium  to  his  consultations,  and  advised 
him,  as  the  solution  of  such  doubts,  to  "  drink  beer,  and 
dance  with  the  girls."  Blind  leaders  of  the  blind !  For 
what  end  were  their  tithes  levied  and  eaten  ;  for  what 
were  their  shovel-hats  scooped-out,  and  their  surplices 
and  cassock-aprons  girt-on ;  and  such  a  church-repair- 
ing, and  chaffering,  and  organing,  and  other  racketing, 
held  over  that  spot  of  God's  Earth,  —  if  Man  were  but 
a  Patent  Digester,  and  the  Belly  with  its  adjuncts  the 
grand  Reality  ?  Fox  turned  from  them,  with  tears  and 
a  sacred  scorn,  back  to  his  Leather-parings  and  his 
Bible.  Mountains  of  encumbrance,  higher  than  ^tna, 
had  been  heaped  over  that  Spirit :  but  it  was  a  Spirit, 
and  would  not  lie  buried  there.  Through  long  days  and 
nights  of  silent  agony,  it  struggled  and  wrestled,  with  a 
man's  force,  to  be  free  :  how  its  prison-mountains  heaved 
and  swayed  tumultuously,  as  the  giant  spirit  shook  them 


INCIDENT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY.  igi 

to  this  hand  and  that,  and  emerged  into  the  light  of 
Heaven  !  That  Leicester  shoe-shop,  had  men  known  it, 
was  a  hoHer  place  than  any  Vatican  or  Loretto-shrine. — 
''  So  bandaged,  and  hampered,  and  hemmed  in,"  groaned 
he,  "  with  thousand  requisitions,  obligations,  straps,  tat-  5 
ters,  and  tagrags,  I  can  neither  see  nor  move  :  not  my 
own  am  I,  but  the  World's ;  and  Time  flies  fast,  and 
Heaven  is  high,  and  Hell  is  deep :  Man  !  bethink  thee, 
if  thou  hast  power  of  Thought  !  Why  not ;  what  binds 
me  here?  Want,  want! — Ha,  of  what?  Will  all  the  10 
shoe-wages  under  the  Moon  ferry  me  across  into  that 
far  Land  of  Light  ?  Only  Meditation  can,  and  devout 
Prayer  to  God.  I  will  to  the  woods  :  the  hollow  of  a 
tree  will  lodge  me,  wild-berries  feed  me  ;  and  for  Clothes, 
cannot  I  stitch  myself  one  perennial  suit  of  Leather?"  15 

*  Historical  Oil-painting,'  continues  Teufelsdrockh,  '  is 
one  of  the  Arts  I  never  practised  ;  therefore  shall  I  not 
decide  whether  this  subject  were  easy  of  execution  on 
the  canvas.  Yet  often  has  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  such 
first  outflashing  of  man's  Freewill,  to  lighten,  more  and  20 
more  into  Day,  the  Chaotic  Night  that  threatened  to 
engulf  him  in  its  hindrances  and  its  horrors,  were 
properly  the  only  grandeur  there  is  in  History.  Let 
some  living  Angelo  or  Rosa,  with  seeing  eye  and  under- 
standing heart,  picture  George  Fox  on  that  morning,  25 
Avhen  he  spreads-out  his  cutting-board  for  the  last  time, 
and  cuts  cowhides  by  unwonted  patterns,  and  stitches 
them  together  into  one  continuous  all-including  Case, 
the  farewell  service  of  his  awl  !  Stitch  away,  thou  noble 
Fox  :  every  prick  of  that  little  instrument  is  pricking  30 
into  the  heart  of  Slavery,  and  World-worship,  and  the 
Mammon-god.  Thy  elbows  jerk,  as  in  strong  swimmer- 
strokes,  and  every  stroke  is  bearing  thee  across  the 
Prison-ditch,  within  which  Vanity  holds  her  Workhouse 


1 92  SAKTOR   RESAKTUS. 

'  and  Ragfair,  into  lands  of  true  Liberty ;  were  the  work 
'  done,  there  is  in  broad  Europe  one  Free  Man,  and  thou 
'  art  he ! 

'Thus  from  the  lowest  depth  there  is  a  path  to  the 
5  '  loftiest  height ;  and  for  the  Poor  also  a  Gospel  has  been 
'published.  Surely,  if,  as  D'Alembert  asserts,  my  illus- 
'  trious  namesake,  Diogenes,  was  the  greatest  man  of  An- 
'  tiquity,  only  that  he  wanted  Decency,  then  by  stronger 
'reason  is  George  Fox  the  greatest  of  the  Moderns,  and 

10  '  greater  than  Diogenes  himself :  for  he  too  stands  on 
'  the  adamantine  basis  of  his  Manhood,  casting  aside  all 
'  props  and  shoars  ;  yet  not,  in  half-savage  Pride,  under- 
'  valuing  the  Earth  ;  valuing  it  rather,  as  a  place  to  yield 
'  him  warmth  and  food,  he  looks  Heavenward  from  his 

1 5  '  Earth,  and  dwells  in  an  element  of  Mercy  and  Worship, 
'  with  a  still  Strength,  such  as  the  Cynic's  Tub  did  nowise 
'  witness.  Great,  truly,  was  that  Tub ;  a  temple  from 
'  which  man's  dignity  and  divinity  was  scornfully  preached 
'  abroad ;  but  greater  is  the  Leather  Hull,  for  the  same 

2o  '  sermon  was  preached  there,  and  not  in  Scorn  but  in 
'  Love.' 

George  Fox's  '  perennial  suit,'  with  all  that  it  held,  has 
been  worn  quite  into  ashes  for  nigh  two  centuries  :  why, 

25  in  a  discussion  on  the  Perfectibility  of  Society^  reproduce 
it  now  ?  Not  out  of  blind  sectarian  partisanship  :  Teu- 
felsdrockh  himself  is  no  Quaker ;  with  all  his  pacific  ten- 
dencies, did  we  not  see  him,  in  that  scene  at  the  North 
Cape,  with  the  Archangel  Smuggler,  exhibit  fire-arms  ? 

30  For  us,  aware  of  his  deep  Sansculottism,  there  is  more 
meant  in  this  passage  than  meets  the  ear.  At  the  same 
time,  who  can  avoid  smiling  at  the  earnestness  and 
Boeotian  simplicity  (if  indeed  there  be  not  an  underhand 
satire  in  it),  with  which  that  '  Incident '  is  here  brought 


INCIDENT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY. 


93 


forward ;  and,  in  the  Professor's  ambiguous  way,  as 
clearly  perhaps  as  he  durst  in  Weissnichtwo,  recom- 
mended to  imitation  !  Does  Teufelsdrockh  anticipate 
that,  in  this  age  of  refinement,  any  considerable  class  of 
the  community,  by  way  of  testifying  against  the  '  Mam-  5 
mon-god,'  and  escaping  from  what  he  calls  '  Vanity's 
Workhouse  and  Ragfair,'  where  doubtless  some  of  them 
are  toiled  and  whipped  and  hoodwinked  sufficiently,  — 
will  sheathe  themselves  in  close-fitting  cases  of  Leather  ? 
The  idea  is  ridiculous  in  the  extreme.  Will  Majesty  lay  lo 
aside  its  robes  of  state,  and  Beauty  its  frills  and  train- 
gowns,  for  a  second-skin  of  tanned  hide  ?  By  which 
change  Huddersfield  and  Manchester,  and  Coventry  and 
Paisley,  and  the  Fancy-Bazaar,  were  reduced  to  hungry 
solitudes;  and  only  Day  and  Martin  could  profit.  For  15 
neither  would  Teufelsdrockh's  mad  daydream,  here  as 
we  presume  covertly  intended,  of  levelling  Society  {level- 
Img  it  indeed  with  a  vengeance,  into  one  huge  drowned 
marsh  !),  and  so  attaining  the  political  effects  of  Nudity 
without  its  frigorific  or  other  consequences,  —  be  thereby  20 
realised.  Would  not  the  rich  man  purchase  a  waterproof 
suit  of  Russia  Leather;  and  the  high-born  Belle  step- 
forth  in  red  or  azure  morocco,  lined  with  shamoy  :  the 
black  cowhide  being  left  to  the  Drudges  and  Gibeonites 
of  the  world;  and  so  all  the  old  Distinctions  be  reestab-  25 
lished .? 

Or  has  the  Professor  his  own  deeper  intention  ;  and 
laughs  in  his  sleeve  at  our  strictures  and  glosses,  which 
indeed  are  but  a  part  thereof  ? 


4 


15 


25 


1^4  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER    II. 

CHURCH-CLOTHES. 

Not  less  questionable  is  his  Chapter  on  Chiwch-Clothes^ 
which  has  the  farther  distinction  of  being  the  shortest  in 
the  Volume.     We  here  translate  it  entire : 

'  By  Church-Clothes,  it  need  not  be  premised,  that  I 
mean  infinitely  more  than  Cassocks  and  Surplices  ;  and 
do  not  at  all  mean  the  mere  haberdasher  Sunday  Clothes 
that  men  go  to  Church  in.  Far  from  it !  Church- 
Clothes  are,  in  our  vocabulary,  the  Forms,  the  Vestures^ 
under  which  men  have  at  various  periods  embodied  and 
represented  for  themselves  the  Religious  Principle ;  that 
is  to  say,  invested  the  Divine  Idea  of  the  World  with  a 
sensible  and  practically  active  Body,  so  that  it  might 
dwell  among  them  as  a  living  and  life-giving  Word. 

'  These  are  unspeakably  the  most  important  of  all  the 
vestures  and  garnitures  of  Human  Existence.  They  are 
first  spun  and  woven,  I  may  say,  by  that  wonder  of 
wonders.  Society  ;  for  it  is  still  only  when  "  two  or 
three  are  gathered  together,"  that  Religion,  spiritually 
existent,  and  indeed  indestructible,  however  latent,  in 
each,  first  outwardly  manifests  itself  (as  with  "  cloven 
tongues  of  fire  "),  and  seeks  to  be  embodied  in  a  visible 
Communion,  and  Church  Militant.  Mystical,  more  than 
magical,  is  that  Communing  of  Soul  with  Soul,  both 
looking  heavenward :  here  properly  Soul  first  speaks 
with  Soul ;  for  only  in  looking  heavenward,  take  it  in 
what  sense  you  may,  not  in  looking  earthward,  does 
what  we  can  call  Union,  mutual  Love,  Society,  begin  to 
be  possible.  How  true  is  that  of  Novalis  :  "  It  is  cer- 
tain, my  Belief  gains  quite  infinitely  the  moment  I  can 
convince   another   mind   thereof "  !     Gaze   thou   in   the 


CHUR  CH-  CL  O  THES.  1 9  5 

'  face  of  thy  Brother,  in  those  eyes  where  plays  the  1am- 
'  bent  fire  of  Kindness,  or  in  those  where  rages  the  lurid 
'  conflagration  of  Anger  ;  feel  how  thy  own  so  quiet  Soul 
'  is  straightway  involuntarily  kindled  with  the  like,  and  ye 
'blaze  and  reverberate  on  each  other,  till  it  is  all  one  5 
'limitless  confluent  flame  (of  embracing  Love,  or  of 
'deadly-grappling  Hate);  and  then  say  what  miraculous 
'  virtue  goes  out  of  man  into  man.  But  if  so,  through  all 
'  the  thick-plied  hulls  of  our  Earthly  Life  ;  how  much 
'more  when  it  is  of  the  Divine  Life  we  speak,  and  10 
'  inmost  Me  is,  as  it  were,  brought  into  contact  with  in- 
'  most  Me  !  1 

'  Thus  was  it  that  I  said,  the  Church-Clothes  are  first    \ 
'  spun  and  woven  by  Society ;    outward   Religion   origi-    | 
'nates  by  Society,  Society  becomes  possible  by  Religion.  ^5 
'  Nay,  perhaps,  every  conceivable  Society,  past  and  pres- 
'ent,    may  well   be    figured   as   properly  and   wholly  a 
'  Church,  in  one  or  other  of  these  three  predicaments : 
'  an  audibly  preaching  and  prophesying  Church,  which  is 
'  the  best ;    second,  a  Church  that  struggles  to  preach  20 
'  and   prophesy,  but    cannot    as    yet,   till    its    Pentecost 
'  come ;  and  third  and  worst,  a  Church  gone  dumb  with 
'  old  age,  or  which  only  mumbles  delirium  prior  to  disso- 
lution.    Whoso  fancies  that  by  Church  is  here  meant 
'Chapterhouses    and   Cathedrals,   or  by   preaching    and  25 
'  prophesying,  mere  speech  and  chanting,  let  him,'  says 
the  oracular  Professor,  '  read  on,  light  of  heart  {getrosten 
'  Muthes). 

'But  with  regard  to  your  Church  proper,  and  the 
'  Church-Clothes  specially  recognised  as  Church-Clothes,  30, 
'  I  remark,  fearlessly  enough,  that  without  such  Vestures 
'  and  sacred  Tissues  Society  has  not  existed,  and  will  not 
'  exist.  For  if  Government  is,  so  to  speak,  the  outward 
'skin  of  the   Body  Politic,   holding  the  whole  together 


i 


196  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  and  protecting  it ;  and  all  your  Craft-Guilds,  and  Asso- 
'  ciations  for  Industry,  of  hand  or  of  head,  are  the 
'  Fleshly  Clothes,  the  muscular  and  osseous  Tissues, 
'  (lying  lender  such  Skin),  whereby  Society  stands  and 
5  '  works  ;  —  then  is  Religion  the  inmost  Pericardial  and 
'  Nervous  Tissue,  which  ministers  Life  and  warm  Circula- 
'  tion  to  the  whole.     Without  which  Pericardial   Tissue 

*  the  Bones  and  Muscles  (of  Industry)  were  inert,  or  ani- 

*  mated   only  by   a   Galvanic  vitality:    the    Skin   would 
10  'become  a  shrivelled  pelt,  or  fast-rotting  raw-hide;  and 

*  Society  itself  a  dead  carcass,  —  deserving  to  be  buried. 

*  Men  were    no    longer    Social,   but    Gregarious ;    which 

*  latter  state  also  could  not  continue,  but  must  gradually 
'  issue  in  universal  selfish  discord,  hatred,  savage  isola- 

15  'tion,  and  dispersion ;  —  whereby,  as  we  might  continue 
'  to  say,  the  very  dust  and  dead  body  of  Society  would 
'have  evaporated  and  become  abolished.  Such,  and  so 
'  all-important,  all-sustaining,  are  the  Church-Clothes,  to 
'  civilised  or  even  to  rational  man. 

20       '  Meanwhile,    in   our   era    of   the    World,    those    same 

J  'Church-Clothes  have  gone  sorrowfully  out-at-elbows : 
'nay,  far  worse,  many  of  them  have  become  mere  hol- 
'  low  Shapes,  or  Masks,  under  which  no  living  Figure  or 
'  Spirit  any  longer  dwells  ;  but  only  spiders  and  unclean 

25  'beetles,  in  horrid  accumulation,  drive  their  trade;  and 
'  the  mask  still  glares  on  you  with  its  glass-eyes,  in 
'  ghastly  affectation  of  Life,  —  some  generation-and-half 
'  after  Religion  has  quite  withdrawn  from  it,  and  in  un- 
'  noticed   nooks    in   weaving   for   herself   new  Vestures, 

30  '  wherewith  to  reappear,  and  bless  us,  or  our  sons  or 
'  grandsons.  As  a  Priest,  or  Interpreter  of  the  Holy,  is 
'  the  noblest  and  highest  of  all  men,  so  is  a  Sham-priest 
'  {Schein-p7^ieste?')  the  falsest  and  basest ;  neither  is  it 
'  doubtful  that  his  Canonicals,  were  they  Popes'  Tiaras, 


SYMBOLS. 


197 


'  will  one  day  be  torn  from  him,  to  make  bandages  for  the 
*  wounds  of  mankind ;  or  even  to  burn  into  tinder,  for 
'  general  scientific  or  culinar}^  purposes. 

'  All  which,  as  out  of  place  here,  falls  to  be  handled  in 
'  my  Second  Volume,  On  the  Fali?igenesia,  or  Newbirth  of 
'  Society;  which  volume,  as  treating  practically  of  the 
'  Wear,  Destruction,  and  Retexture  of  Spiritual  Tissues, 
*or  Garments,  forms,  properly  speaking,  the  Transcen- 
'  dental  or  ultimate  Portion  of  this  my  Work  on  Clothes, 
'  and  is  already  in  a  state  of  forwardness.' 

And  herewith,  no  farther  exposition,  note,  or  commen- 
.tary  being  added,  does  Teufelsdrockh,  and  must  his 
Editor  now,  terminate  the  singular  chapter  on  Church- 
Clothes  ! 


CHAPTER    III. 


SYMBOLS. 


Probably  it  will  elucidate  the  drift  of  these  foregoing  15 
obscure  utterances,   if  we  here  insert  somewhat  of  our 
Professor's  speculations  oxv  Sjnihols.     To  state  his  whole 
doctrine,  indeed,  were  beyond  our  compass  :  nowhere  is 
he  more  mysterious,  impalpable,  than  in  this  of  '  Fantasy 
being  the  organ  of  the  Godlike  ; '  and  how  '  Man  thereby,  20 
'  though  based,  to  all  seeming,  on  the  small  Visible,  does 
'  nevertheless  extend  down  into  the  infinite  deeps  of  the 
'  Invisible,  of  which  Invisible,  indeed,  his  Life  is  properly 
'the  bodying  forth.'     Let  us,  omitting  these   high  tran- 
scendental aspects  of  the  matter,  study  to  glean  (whether  25 
from  the  Paper-bags  or  the  Printed  Volume)   what  little 
seems  logical  and  practical,  and  cunningly  arrange  it  into 


98 


SARTOR    RESARTUS. 


such  degree  of  coherence  as  it  will  assume.      By  way  of 
proem,  take  the  following  not  injudicious  remarks: 

'The  benignant  efficacies  of  Concealment,'  cries  our 
Professor,  '  who  shall  speak  or  sing  ?  Silence  and 
Secrecy  !  Altars  might  still  be  raised  to  them  (were 
this  an  altar-building  time)  for  universal  worship.  Si- 
lence is  the  element  in  which  great  things  fashion  them- 
selves-:,together  ;  that  at  length  they  may  emerge,  full- 
formed  and  majestic,  into  the  daylight  of  Life,  which 
they  are  thenceforth  to  rule.  Not  William  the  Silent 
only,  but  all  the  considerable  men  I  have  known,  and 
the  most  undiplomatic  and  unstrategic  of  these,  forbore 
to  babble  of  what  they  were  creating  and  projecting. 
Nay,  in  thy  own  mean  perplexities,  do  thou  thyself  but 
hold  thy  tongue  f 07'  one  day:  on  the  morrow^,  how  much 
clearer  are  thy  purposes  and  duties  ;  what  wreck  and 
rubbish  have  those  mute  workmen  within  thee  swept 
away,  when  intrusive  noises  were  shut  out !  Speech  is 
too  often  not,  as  the  Frenchman  defined  it,  the  art  of 
concealing  Thought  ;  but  of  quite  stifling  and  suspend- 
ing Thought,  so  that  there  is  none  to  conceal.  Speech 
too  is  great,  but  not  the  greatest.  As  the  Swiss  In- 
scription says :  Sprechen  ist  silbem,  Schweigen  ist  golden 
(Speech  is  silvern.  Silence  is  golden)  ;  or  as  I  might 
rather  express  it :  Speech  is  of  Time,  Silence  is  of 
Eternity. 

'  Bees  will  not  work  except  in  darkness  ;  Thought  will 
not  work  except  in  Silence  :  neither  will  Virtue  work 
except  in  Secrecy.  Let  not  thy  left  hand  know  what 
thy  right  hand  doeth  !  Neither  shalt  thou  prate  even  to 
thy  own  heart  of  "  those  secrets  known  to  all."  Is  not 
Shame  (^Schaani)  the  soil  of  all  Virtue,  of  all  good  manners 
and  good  morals  ?  Like  other  plants.  Virtue  will  not 
grow  unless  its  root  be  hidden,  buried  from  the  eye  of  the 


SYMBOLS.  IQQ 

sun.  Let  the  sun  shine  on  it,  nay,  do  but  look  at  it 
privily  thyself,  the  root  withers,  and  no  flower  will  glad 
thee.  O  my  Friends,  when  we  view  the  fair  clustering 
flowers  that  overwreathe,  for  example,  the  Marriage- 
bower,  and  encircle  man's  life  with  the  fragrance  and  5 
hues  of  Heaven,  what  hand  will  not  smite  the  foul 
plunderer  that  grubs  them  up  by  the  roots,  and,  with 
grinning,  grunting  satisfaction,  shows  us  the  dung  they 
flourish  in !  Men  speak  much  of  the  Printing-Press 
with  its  Newspapers  :  du  Himmel I  what  are  these  to  10 
Clothes  and  the  Tailor's  Goose  t ' 

'  Of  kin  to  the  so  incalculable  influences  of  Conceal- 
ment, and  connected  with  still  greater  things,  is  the 
wondrous  agency  of  Symbols.  In  a  Symbol  there  is 
concealment  and  yet  revelation:  here,  therefore,  by  15 
Silence  and  by  Speech  acting  together,  comes  a  double 
significance.  And  if  both  the  Speech  be  itself  high,  and 
the  Silence  fit  and  noble,  how  expressive  will  their  union 
be  !  Thus  in  many  a  painted  Device,  or  simple  Seal- 
emblem,  the  commonest  Truth  stands  out  to  us  pro-  20 
claimed  with  quite  new  emphasis. 

'  For  it  is  here  that  Fantasy  with  her  mystic  wonder- 
land plays  into  the  small  prose  domain  of  Sense,  and 
becomes  incorporated  therewith.  In  the  Symbol  proper, 
what  we  can  call  a  Symbol,  there  is  ever,  more  or  less  25 
distinctly  and  directly,  some  embodiment  and  revelation 
of  the  Infinite  ;  the  Infinite  is  made  to  blend  itself  with 
the  Finite,  to  stand  visible,  and  as  it  were,  attainable 
there.  By  Symbols,  accordingly,  is  man  guided  and 
commanded,  made  happy,  made  wretched.  He  every-  30 
where  finds  himself  encompassed  with  Symbols,  recog- 
nised as  such  or  not  recognised :  the  Universe  is  but 
one  vast  Symbol  of  God  ;  nay,  if  thou  wilt  have  it,  what 
is  man  himself  but  a  Symbol  of  God ;  is  not  all  that  he 


2  00  SJA'TOA'   KESAK'J'L'S. 

does  symbolical ;  a  revelation  to  Sense  of  the  mystic 
god-given  force  that  is  in  him  ;  a  "  Gospel  of  Freedom," 
which  he,  the  "  Messias  of  Nature,"  preaches,  as  he  can, 
by  act  and  word?  Not  a  Hut  he  builds  but  is  the 
visible  embodiment  of  a  Thought ;  but  bears  visible 
record  of  invisible  things  ;  but  is,  in  the  transcendental 
sense,  symbolical  as  well  as  real.' 

'  Man,'  says  the  Professor  elsewhere,  in  quite  antipodal 
contrast  with  these  high-soaring  delineations,  which  we 
lo  have  here  cut-short  on  the  verge  of  the  inane, '  Man  is  by 
birth  somewhat  of  an  owl.  Perhaps,  too,  of  all  the  owl- 
eries  that  ever  possessed  him,  the  most  owlish,  if  we 
consider  it,  is  that  of  your  actually  existing  Motive-Mill- 
wrights. Fantastic  tricks  enough  has  man  played,  in 
his  time ;  has  fancied  himself  to  be  most  things,  down 
even  to  an  animated  heap  of  Glass  :  but  to  fancy  him- 
self a  dead  Iron-Balance  for  weighing  Pains  and  Pleas- 
ures on,  was  reserved  for  this  his  latter  era.  There 
stands  he,  his  Universe  one  huge  Manger,  filled  with 
hay  and  thistles  to  be  weighed  against  each  other ;  and 
looks  long-eared  enough.  Alas,  poor  devil !  spectres 
are  appointed  to  haunt  him  :  one  age  he  is  hagridden, 
bewitched  ;  the  next,  priestridden,  befooled  ;  in  all  ages, 
bedevilled.  And  now  the  Genius  of  Mechanism  smoth- 
ers him  worse  than  any  Nightmare  did ;  till  the  Soul  is 
nigh  choked  out  of  him,  and  only  a  kind  of  Digestive, 
Mechanic  life  remains.  In  Earth  and  in  Heaven  he 
can  see  nothing  but  Mechanism ;  has  fear  for  nothing 
else,  hope  in  nothing  else :  the  world  would  indeed 
grind  him  to  pieces ;  but  cannot  he  fathom  the  Doc- 
trine of  Motives,  and  cunningly  compute  these,  and 
mechanise  them  to  grind  the  other  way  ? 

'  Were  he  not,  as  has  been  said,  purblinded  by  enchant- 
ment, you  had  but  to  bid  him  open  his  eyes  and  look. 


SYMBOLS.  20 1 

In  which  country,  in  which  time,  was  it  hitherto  that 
man's  history,  or  the  history  of  any  man,  went-on  by 
calculated  or  calculable  "  Motives  "?  What  make  ye  of 
your  Christianities,  and  Chivalries,  and  Reformations, 
and  Marseillese  Hymns,  and  Reigns  of  Terror  ?  Nay,  5 
has  not  perhaps,  the  Motive-grinder  himself  been  in 
Love?  Did  he  never  stand  so  much  as  a  contested 
Election?  Leave  him  to  Time,  and  the  medicating 
virtue  of  Nature.' 

'  Yes,  Friends,'  elsewhere  observes  the  Professor,  '  not  10 
our  Logical,  Mensurative  faculty,  but  our  Imaginative 
one  is  King  over  us ;    I  might  say,  Priest  and  Prophet 
to  lead  us  heavenward  ;  or  Magician  and  Wizard  to  lead 
us  hellward.     Nay,  even  for  the  basest  Sensualist,  what 
is  Sense  but  the  implement  of  Fantasy;   the  vessel  it  15 
drinks  out  of  ?     Ever  in  the  dullest  existence,  there  is  a 
sheen  either  of  Inspiration  or  of  Madness  (thou  partly 
hast  it  in  thy  choice,  which,  of  the  two),  that  gleams-in 
from  the  circumambient  Eternity,  and  colours  with  its 
own  hues  our  little  islet  of  Time.     The  Understanding  20 
is  indeed  thy  window,  too  clear  thou  canst  not  make  it ; 
but   Fantasy   is   thy  eye,   with  its   colour-giving  retina, 
healthy  or  diseased.     Have  not   I   myself  known  five- 
hundred  living   soldiers   sabred   into   crows'-meat  for  a 
piece  of  glazed  cotton,  which  they   called  their  Flag;  25 
which,  had  you  sold  it  at  any  market-cross,  would  not 
have  brought  above  three  groschen  ?     Did  not  the  whole 
Hungarian    Nation    rise,    like    some  tumultuous  moon- 
stirred  Atlantic,  when  Kaiser  Joseph  pocketed  their  Iron 
Crown ;  an  implement,  as  was  sagaciously  observed,  in  30 
size  and  commercial  value  little  differing  from  a  horse- 
shoe ?     It  is   in   and    through  Sy7?ibols  that  man,   con- 
sciously   or    unconsciously,   lives,   works,    and    has    his 
being :  those  ages,  moreover,  are  accounted  the  noblest 


:o2  SA/^TOR   RESARTUS. 

which  can  the  best  recognise  symbolical  worth,  and  prize 
it  the  highest.  For  is  not  a  Symbol  ever,  to  him  who 
has  eyes  for  it,  some  dimmer  or  clearer  revelation  of 
the  Godlike? 

'  Of  Symbols,  however,  I  remark  farther,  that  they  have 
both  an  extrinsic  and  intrinsic  value  ;  oftenest  the  former 
only.  What,  for  instance,  was  in  that  clouted  Shoe, 
which  the  peasants  bore  aloft  with  them  as  ensign  in 
their  Baucr/ikricg  (Peasants'  War)  ?  Or  in  the  Wallet- 
and-staff  round  which  the  Netherland  Giieux,  glorying 
in  that  nickname  of  Beggars,  heroically  rallied  and  pre- 
vailed, though  against  King  Philip  himself  ?  Intrinsic 
significance  these  had  none  :  only  extrinsic  ;  as  the  acci- 
dental Standards  of  multitudes  more  or  less  sacredly 
uniting  together ;  in  which  union  itself,  as  above  noted, 
there  is  ever  something  mystical  and  borrowing  of  the 
Godlike.  Under  a  like  category,  too,  stand,  or  stood, 
the  stupidest  heraldic  Coats-of-arms ;  military  Banners 
everywhere  ;  and  generally  all  national  or  other  sectarian 
Costumes  and  Customs  :  they  have  no  intrinsic,  neces- 
sary divineness,  or  even  worth ;  but  have  acquired  an 
extrinsic  one.  Nevertheless  through  all  these  there 
glimmers  something  of  a  Divine  Idea ;  as  through  mili- 
tary Banners  themselves,  the  Divine  Idea  of  Duty,  of 
heroic  Daring ;  in  some  instances  of  Freedom,  of  Right. 
Nay,  the  highest  ensign  that  men  ever  met  and  embraced 
under,  the  Cross  itself,  had  no  meaning  save  an  acci- 
dental extrinsic  one. 

'  Another  matter  it  is,  however,  when  your  Symbol  has 
intrinsic  meaning,  and  is  of  itself  Jit  that  men  should 
unite  round  it.  Let  but  the  Godlike  manifest  itself  to 
Sense ;  let  but  Eternity  look,  more  or  less  visibly, 
through  the  Time-figure  (ZeitbUd)  !  Then  is  it  fit  that 
men  unite   there ;    and   worship    together  before   such 


SYMBOLS. 


203 


Symbol ;  and  so  from  day  to  day,  and  from  age  to  age, 
superadd  to  it  new  divineness. 

*  Of  this  latter  sort  are  all  true  Works  of  Art :  in  them 
(if  thou  know  a  Work  of  Art  from  a  Daub  of  Artifice) 
wilt  thou  discern  Eternity  looking  through  Time ;    the    5 
Godlike  rendered  visible.     Here  too  may  an  extrinsic 
value  gradually  superadd  itself :  thus  certain  Iliads^  and 
the  like,  have,  in  three-thousand  years,  attained  quite 
new  significance.     But  nobler  than  all  in  this  kind  are 
the  Lives  of  heroic  god-inspired  Men ;   for  what  other  10 
Work  of  Art  is  so  divine  ?     In  Death  too,  in  the  Death 
of  the  Just,  as  the  last  perfection  of  a  Work  of  Art,  may 
we   not    discern   symbolic   meaning  ?     In   that   divinely 
transfigured  Sleep,  as  of  Victory,  resting  over  the  be- 
loved face  which  now  knows  thee  no  more,  read  (if  thou  15 
canst  for  tears)  the  confluence  of  Time  with  Eternity, 
and  some  gleam  of  the  latter  peering  through. 

'  Highest  of  all  Symbols  are  those  wherein  the  Artist 
or  Poet  has  risen  into  Prophet,  and  all  men  can  recog- 
nise a  present  God,  and  worship  the  same :  I  mean  20 
religious  Symbols.  Various  enough  have  been  such 
religious  Symbols,  what  we  call  Religions ;  as  men  stood 
in  this  stage  of  culture  or  the  other,  and  could  worse  or 
better  body-forth  the  Godlike  :  some  Symbols  with  a 
transient  intrinsic  worth ;  many  with  only  an  extrinsic.  25 
If  thou  ask  to  what  height  man  has  carried  it  in  this 
manner,  look  on  our  divinest  Symbol :  on  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  and  his  Life,  and  his  Biography,  and  what 
followed  therefrom.  Higher  has  the  human  thought  not 
yet  reached :  this  is  Christianity  and  Christendom ;  a  30 
Symbol  of  quite  perennial,  infinite  character;  whose 
significance  will  ever  demand  to  be  anew  inquired  into, 
and  anew  made  manifest. 

'  But,  on  the  whole,  as  Time  adds  much  to  the  sacred- 


204 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


ness  of  Symbols,  so  likewise  in  his  progress  he  at  length 
defaces,  or  even  desecrates  them  ;  and  Symbols,  like  all 
terrestrial  Garments,  wax  old.  Homer's  Epos  has  not 
ceased  to  be  true  ;  yet  it  is  no  longer  our  Epos,  but 
shines  in  the  distance,  if  clearer  and  clearer,  yet  also 
smaller  and  smaller,  like  a  receding  Star.  It  needs  a 
scientific  telescope,  it  needs  to  be  reinterpreted  and 
artificially  brought  near  us,  before  we  can  so  much  as 
know  that  it  7vas  a  Sun.  So  likewise  a  day  comes  when 
the  Runic  Thor,  with  his  Eddas,  must  withdraw  into 
dimness ;  and  many  an  African  Mumbo-Jumbo,  and 
Indian  Pawaw  be  utterly  abolished.  For  all  things,  even 
Celestial  Luminaries,  much  more  atmospheric  meteors, 
have  their  rise,  their  culmination,  their  decline.' 

'  Small  is  this  which  thou  tellest  me,  that  the  Royal 
Sceptre  is  but  a  piece  of  gilt-wood ;  that  the  Pyx  has 
become  a  most  foolish  box,  and  truly,  as  Ancient  Pistol 
thought,  "of  little  price."  A  right  Conjuror  might  I 
name  thee,  couldst  thou  conjure  back  into  these  wooden 
tools  the  divine  virtue  they  once  held.' 

'  Of  this  thing,  however,  be  certain  :  wouldst  thou  plant 
for  Eternity,  then  plant  into  the  deep  infinite  faculties 
of  man,  his  Fantasy  and  Heart :  wouldst  thou  plant  for 
Year  and  Day,  then  plant  into  his  shallow  superficial  facul- 
ties, his  Self-love  and  Arithmetical  Understanding,  what 
will  grow  there.?  A  Hierarch,  therefore,  and  Pontiff  of 
the  World  will  we  call  him,  the  Poet  and  inspired  Maker ; 
who,  Prometheus-like,  can  shape  new  Symbols,  and 
bring  new  Fire  from  Heaven  to  fix  it  there.  Such  too 
will  not  always  be  wanting ;  neither  perhaps  now  are. 
Meanwhile,  as  the  average  of  matter  goes,  we  account 
him  Legislator  and  wise  who  can  so  much  as  tell  when 
a  Symbol  has  grown  old,  and  gently  remove  it. 

'  When,  as  the  last  English  Coronation  was  preparing,' 


HELOTAGE.  205 

concludes  this  wonderful  Professor,  '  I  read  in  their 
Newspapers  that  the  "  Champion  of  England,"  he  who 
has  to  offer  battle  to  the  Universe  for  his  new  King, 
had  brought  it  so  far  that  he  could  now  "  mount  his 
horse  with  little  assistance,"  I  said  to  myself :  Here  also 
we  have  a  Symbol  well-nigh  superannuated.  Alas,  move 
whithersoever  you  may,  are  not  the  tatters  and  rags  of 
superannuated  worn-out  Symbols  (in  this  Ragfair  of  a 
World)  dropping  off  everywhere,  to  hoodwink,  to  halter, 
to  tether  you  ;  nay,  if  you  shake  them  not  aside,  threat- 
ening to  accumulate,  and  perhaps  produce  suffocation  ? ' 


CHAPTER    IV. 


HELOTAGE. 


At  this  point  we  determine  on  adverting  shortly,  or 
rather  reverting,  to  a  certain  Tract  of  Hofrath  Heu- 
schrecke's,  entitled  Institute  for  the  Repression  of  Popula- 
tion; which  lies,  dishonourably  enough  (with  torn  leaves,  15 
and  a  perceptible  smell  of  aloetic  drugs),  stuffed  into  the 
Bag  Pisces.  Not  indeed  for  the  sake  of  the  Tract  itself, 
which  we  admire  little  ;  but  of  the  marginal  Notes,  evi- 
dently in  Teufelsdrockh's  hand,  which  rather  copiously 
fringe  it.     A  few  of  these  may  be  in  the  right  place  here.  20 

Into  the  Hofrath's  Institute^  with  its  extraordinary 
schemes,  and  machinery  of  Corresponding  Boards  and 
the  like,  we  shall  not  so  much  as  glance.  Enough  for  us 
to  understand  that  Heuschrecke  is  a  disciple  of  Malthus ; 
and  so  zealous  for  the  doctrine,  that  his  zeal  almost  25 
literally  eats  him  up.  A  deadly  fear  of  Population  pos- 
sesses  the    Hofrath ;    something    like   a   fixed-idea ;    un- 


2o6 


SA  A-  TO  A'   RES  A  K  TUS. 


doubtedly  akin  co  the  more  diluted  forms  of  Madness. 
Nowhere,  in  that  quarter  of  his  intellectual  world,  is  there 


light ; 


nothing 


but    a    grim   shadow   of    Hunger;    open 


mouths  opening  wider  and  wider ;  a  world  to  terminate 
5  by  the  frightfullest  consummation  :  by  its  too  dense  in- 
habitants, famished  into  delirium,  universally  eating  one 
another.  To  make  air  for  himself  in  which  strangula- 
tion, choking  enough  to  a  benevolent  heart,  the  Hofrath 
founds,  or  proposes  to  found,  this  Institute  of  his,  as  the 
10  best  he  can  do.  It  is  only  with  our  Professor's  comments 
thereon  that  we  concern  ourselves. 

First,  then,  remark  that  Teufelsdrockh,  as  a  speculative 
Radical,  has  his  own  notions  about  human  dignity ;  that 
the  Zahdarm  palaces  and  courtesies  have  not  made  him 
15  forgetful  of  the  Futteral  cottages.  On  the  blank  cover 
of  Heuschrecke's  Tract,  we  find  the  following  indistinctly 
engrossed : 

'  Two  men  I  honour,  and  no  third.  First,  the  toilworn 
Craftsman  that  with  earth-made  Implement  laboriously 
conquers  the  Earth,  and  makes  her  man's.  Venerable 
to  me  is  the  hard  Hand ;  crooked,  coarse ;  wherein  not- 
withstanding lies  a  cunning  virtue,  indefeasibly  royal,  as 
of  the  Sceptre  of  this  Planet.  Venerable  too  is  the 
rugged  face,  all  weather-tanned,  besoiled,  with  its  rude 
25  '  intelligence ;  for  it  is  the  face  of  a  Man  living  manlike. 
O,  but  the  more  venerable  for  thy  rudeness,  and  even 
because  we  must  pity  as  well  as  love  thee !  Hardly- 
entreated  Brother  !  For  us  was  thy  back  so  bent,  for  us 
were  thy  straight  limbs  and  fingers  so  deformed :  thou 
30  '  wert  our  Conscript,  on  whom  the  lot  fell,  and  fighting 
our  battles  wert  so  marred.  For  in  thee  too  lay  a  god- 
created  Form,  but  it  was  not  to  be  unfolded  ;  encrusted 
must  it  stand  with  the  thick  adhesions  and  defacements 
of  Labour :  and  thy  body,  like  thy  soul,  was  not  to  know 


HELOTAGE. 


207 


'  freedom.  'Yet  toil  on,  toil  on :  tho7i  art  in  thy  duty,  be 
'  out  of  it  wlio  may ;  thou  toilest  for  the  altogether  indis- 
'  pensable,  for  daily  bread. 

*  A  second  man  I  honour,  and  still  more  highly :    Him 
'  who  is  seen  toiling  for  the  spiritually  indispensable  ;  not    5 
'  daily  bread,  but  the  bread  of  Life.     Is  not  he  too  in  his 
'duty;  endeavouring  towards  inward  Harmony;  reveal- 
'  ing  this,  by  act  or  by  word,  through  all  his  outward  en- 
'  deavours,  be  they  high  or  low?     Highest  of  all,  when 
'  his  outward  and  his  inward  endeavour  are  one :   when  10 
'  we  can  name  him  Artist ;  not  earthly  Craftsman  only, 
'  but  inspired  Thinker,  who  with  heaven-made  Implement 
'  conquers  Heaven  for  us  !     If  the  poor  and  humble  toil 
'that  we  have  Food,  must  not  the  high  and  glorious  toil 
'for  him  in  return,  that  he  have  Light,  have  Guidance,  15 
'  Freedom,  Immortality  ?  —  These  two,  in  all  their  degrees, 
'  I  honour :  all  else  is  chaff  and  dust,  which  let  the  wind 
'  blow  whither  it  listeth. 

'  Unspeakably  touching  is  it,  however,  when  I  find 
'  both  dignities  united  ;  and  he  that  must  toil  outwardly  20 
'  for  the  lowest  of  man's  wants,  is  also  toiling  inwardly 
'  for  the  highest.  Sublimer  in  this  world  know  I  nothing 
'than  a  Peasant  Saint,  could  such  now  anywhere  be  met 
'  with.  Such  a  one  will  take  thee  back  to  Nazareth  itself ; 
'thou  wilt  see  the  splendour  of  Heaven  spring  forth  from  25 
'the  humblest  depths  of  Earth,  like  a  light  shining  in 
'great  darkness.' 

And  again  :  '  It  is  not  because  of  his  toils  that  I  lament 
'  for  the  poor :  we  must  all  toil,  or  steal  (howsoever  we 
'  name  our  stealing),  which  is  worse ;  no  faithful  workman  30 
'  finds  his  task  a  pastime.  The  poor  is  hungry  and 
'  athirst ;  but  for  him  also  there  is  food  and  drink  :  he  is 
'  heavy-laden  and  weary ;  but  for  him  also  the  Heavens 
'  send  Sleep,  and  of  the  deepest ;  in  his  smoky  cribs,  a 


2o8  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

clear  dewy  heaven  of  Rest  envelops  him,  and  fitful  glit- 
terings  of  cloud-skirted  Dreams.  But  what  I  do  mourn 
over  is,  that  the  lamp  of  his  soul  should  go  out ;  that  no 
ray  of  heavenly,  or  even  of  earthly  knowledge,  should 
visit  him ;  but  only,  in  the  haggard  darkness,  like  two 
spectres,  Fear  and  Indignation  bear  him  company.  Alas, 
while  the  Body  stands  so  broad  and  brawny,  must  the 
Soul  lie  blinded,  dwarfed,  stupefied,  almost  annihilated  1 
Alas,  was  this  too  a  Breath  of  God ;  bestowed  in 
Heaven,  but  on  earth  never  to  be  unfolded  !  —  That 
there  should  one  Man  die  ignorant  who  had  capacity 
for  Knowledge,  this  I  call  a  tragedy,  were  it  to  happen 
more  than  twenty  times  in  the  minute,  as  by  some  com- 
putations it  does.  The  miserable  fraction  of  Science 
which  our  united  Mankind,  in  a  wide  Universe  of  Nes- 
cience, has  acquired,  why  is  not  this,  with  all  diligence, 
imparted  to  all  ? ' 

Quite  in  an  opposite  strain  is  the  following :  '  The  old 
Spartans  had  a  wiser  method  ;  and  went  out  and  hunted- 
down  their  Helots,  and  speared  and  spitted  them,  when 
they  grew  too  numerous.  With  our  improved  fashions 
of  hunting,  Herr  Hofrath,  now  after  the  invention  of  fire- 
arms, and  standing-armies,  how  much  easier  were  such  a 
a  hunt  !  Perhaps  in  the  most  thickly-peopled  country, 
some  three  days  annually  might  suffice  to  shoot  all  the 
able-bodied  Paupers  that  had  accumulated  within  the 
year.  Let  Governments  think  of  this.  The  expense 
were  trifling :  nay,  the  very  carcasses  would  pay  it. 
Have  them  salted  and  barrelled ;  could  not  you  victual 
therewith,  if  not  Army  and  Navy,  yet  richly  such  infirm 
Paupers,  in  workhouses  and  elsewhere,  as  enlightened 
Charity,  dreading  no  evil  of  them,  might  see  good  to 
keep  alive  ? ' 

'  And  yet,'  writes  he  farther  on,  '  there  must  be  some- 


HELOTAGE. 


209 


'  thing  wrong.  A  full-formed  Horse  will,  in  any  market, 
'  bring  from  twenty  to  as  high  as  two  hundred  Friedrichs 
'  d'or :  such  is  his  worth  to  the  world.  A  full-formed 
'  Man  is  not  only  worth  nothing  to  the  world,  but  the 
'  world  could  afford  him  a  round  sum  would  he  simply  5 
'  engage  to  go  and  hang  himself.  Nevertheless,  which  of 
'  the  two  was  the  more  cunningly-devised  article,  even  as 
'  an  Engine  ?  Good  Heavens  !  A  white  European  Man, 
'  standing  on  his  two  Legs,  with  his  two  five-fingered 
'  Hands  at  his  shackle-bones,  and  miraculous  Head  on  his  10 
'  shoulders,  is  worth,  I  should  say,  from  fifty  to  a  hundred 
'  Horses  !  ' 

'  True,  thou  Gold-Hofrath,'  cries  the  Professor  else- 
where :  '  too  crowded  indeed  !  Meanwhile,  what  portion 
of  this  inconsiderable  terraqueous  Globe  have  ye  actu-  15 
ally  tilled  and  delved,  till  it  will  grow  no  more  ?  How 
thick  stands  your  Population  in  the  Pampas  and  Savan- 
nas of  America ;  round  ancient  Carthage,  and  in  the  in- 
terior of  Africa ;  on  both  slopes  of  the  Altaic  chain,  in 
the  central  Platform  of  Asia ;  in  Spain,  Greece,  Turkey,  20 
Grim  Tartary,  the  Curragh  of  Kildare  ?  One  man,  in 
one  year,  as  I  have  understood  it,  if  you  lend  him  Earth, 
will  feed  himself  and  nine  others.  Alas,  where  now  are 
the  Hengsts  and  Alarics  of  our  still-glowing,  still-expand- 
ing Europe  ;  who,  when  their  home  is  grown  too  narrow,  25 
will  enlist,  and,  like  Fire-pillars,  guide  onwards  those  su- 
perfluous masses  of  indomitable  living  Valour ;  equipped, 
not  now  with  the  battle-axe  and  war-chariot,  but  with  the 
steam-engine  and  ploughshare  ?  Where  are  they  ?  — 
Preserving  their  Game! '  30 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


CHAPTER   V. 


THE    PHGENIX. 


Putting  which  four  singular  Chapters  together,  and 
alongside  of  them  numerous  hints,  and  even  direct  utter- 
ances, scattered  over    these  Writings    of   his,  we    come 
upon  the  startling  yet  not  quite  unlooked-for  conclusion, 
5  that  Teufelsdrockh  is  one  of  those  who  consider  Society, 
properly  so  called,  to  be  as  good  as  extinct ;  and  that 
'   only  the  gregarious  feelings,  and  old  inherited  habitudes, 
at  this  juncture,  hold  us  from  Dispersion,  and  universal 
national,    civil,   domestic   and   personal   war  !     He   says 
o  expressly :    '  For  the  last  three  centuries,  above  all  for  the 
last  three  quarters  of  a  century,  that  same  Pericardial 
Nervous  Tissue  (as  we  named  it)  of  Religion,  where  lies 
the  Life-essence  of  Society,  has  been  smote-at  and  per- 
forated, needfully  and  needlessly ;  till  now  it  is  quite  rent 
15    into   shreds;    and   Society,  long    pining,   diabetic,    con- 
sumptive, can  be  regarded  as  defunct ;  for  those  spas- 
modic, galvanic  sprawlings  are  not  life  ;  neither  indeed 
will   they   endure,  galvanise   as    you   may,  beyond   two 
days.' 

'  Call  ye  that  a  Society,'  cries  he  again,  *  where  there  is 
no  longer  any  Social  Idea  extant;  not  so  much  as  the 
Idea  of  a  common  Home,  but  only  of  a  common,  over- 
crowded Lodging-house  ?  Where  each,  isolated,  regard- 
less of  his  neighbour,  turned  against  his  neighbour, 
25  "  clutches  what  he  can  get,  and  cries  "  Mine  !  "  and  calls 
it  Peace,  because,  in  the  cut-purse  and  cut-throat  Scram- 
ble, no  steel  knives,  but  a  far  cunninger  sort,  can  be 
employed  ?  Where  Friendship,  Communion,  has  become 
an  incredible  tradition ;  and  your  holiest  Sacramental 
30  '  Supper   is    a   smoking  Tavern    Dinner,  with    Cook  for 


THE   PHCENIX.  2ii 

'  Evangelist  ?  Where  your  Priest  has  no  tongue  but  for 
'  plate-licking  :  and  your  high  Guides  and  Governors  can- 
'  not  guide  ;  but  on  all  hands  hear  it  passionately  pro- 
'  claimed  :  Laissez  faire  ;  Leave  us  alone  of  your  guidance, 
'  such  light  is  darker  than  darkness  ;  eat  you  your  wages,  5 
'  and  sleep  ! 

'Thus,  too,'  continues  he,  'does  an  observant  eye  dis- 
'  cern  everywhere  that  saddest  spectacle :  The  Poor 
'perishing,  like  neglected,  foundered  Draught-Cattle,  of 
'  Hunger  and  Over- work  ;  the  Rich,  still  more  wretchedly,  10 
'  of  Idleness,  Satiety,  and  Over-growth.  The  Highest  in 
'  rank,  at  length,  without  honour  from  the  Lowest ; 
'  scarcely,  with  a  little  mouth-honour,  as  from  tavern- 
'  waiters  who  expect  to  put  it  in  the  bill.  Once-sacred 
*  Symbols  fluttering  as  empty  Pageants,  whereof  men  1 5 
'  grudge  even  the  expense  ;  a  World  becoming  disman- 
'  tied  :  in  one  word,  the  Church  fallen  speechless,  from 
'  obesity  and  apoplexy ;  the  State  shrunken  into  a 
'  Police-Oflice,  straitened  to  get  its  pay !  ' 

We  might  ask,  are  there  many  'observant  eyes,'  be-  20 
longing  to  practical  men,  in  England  or  elsewhere,  which 
have  descried  these  phenomena ;  or  is  it  only  from  the 
mystic  elevation  of  a  German  WaJmgasse  that  such  won- 
ders   are    visible  ?       Teufelsdrockh    contends    that    the 
aspect   of    a    'deceased   or   expiring   Society'   fronts    us  25 
everywhere,  so  that  whoso  runs  may  read.     '  What,  for 
example,'  says  he,  'is  the  universally-arrogated  Virtue, 
almost   the    sole    remaining    Catholic  Virtue,   of    these 
days  ?     For  some  half  century,  it  has  been  the  thing  you 
name   "  Independence."      Suspicion   of   "  Servility,"   of  30 
reverence  for  Superiors,  the  very  dogleech  is  anxious  to 
disavow.       Fools !       Were    your    Superiors    worthy   to~ 
govern,    and   you  worthy  to   obey,  reverence  for   them      v-^  v 
were  even  your  only  possible  freedom.     Independence,  /" 


2  12  SAKTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  in  all  kinds,  is  rebellion ;  if  unjust  rebellion,  why  parade 

*  it,  and  everywhere  prescribe  it  ? ' 

But    what    then  ?      Are    we    returning,    as    Rousseau 

prayed,  to  the  state  of  Nature?  'The  Soul  Politic 
having  departed,'  says  Teufelsdrockh,  '  what  can  follow 
but  that  the  Body  Politic  be  decently  interred,  to  avoid 
putrescence  ?  Liberals,  Economists,  Utilitarians  enough 
I  see  marching  with  its  bier,  and  chanting  loud  pceans, 
towards  the  funeral-pile,  where,  amid  wailings  from 
some,  and  saturnalian  revelries  from  the  most,  the 
venerable  Corpse  is  to  be  burnt.  Or,  in  plain  words, 
that  these  men,  Liberals,  Utilitarians,  or  whatsoever 
they  are  called,  will  ultimately  carry  their  point,  and 
dissever  and  destroy  most  existing  Institutions  of 
Society,  seems  a  thing  which  has  some  time  ago  ceased 
to  be  doubtful. 

'  Do  we  not  see  a  little  subdivision  of  the  grand  Utili- 
tarian Armament  come  to  light  even  in  insulated  Eng- 
land ?  A  living  nucleus,  that  will  attract  and  grow, 
does  at  length  appear  there  also  ;  and  under  curious 
phasis  ;  properly  as  the  inconsiderable  fag-end,  and  so 
far  in  the  rear  of  the  others  as  to  fancy  itself  the  van. 
Our  European  Mechanisers  are  a  sect  of  boundless  dif- 
fusion, activity,  and  cooperative  spirit :  has  not  Utilitari- 
anism flourished  in  high  places  of  Thought,  here  among 
ourselves,  and  in  every  European  country,  at  some  time 
or  other,  within  the  last  fifty  years  ?  If  now  in  all 
countries,  except  perhaps  England,  it  has  ceased  to 
flourish,  or  indeed  to  exist,  among  Thinkers,  and  sunk 
to  Journalists  and  the  popular  mass,  —  who  sees  not 
that,  as  hereby  it  no  longer  preaches,  so  the  reason  is, 
it  now  needs  no  Preaching,  but  is  in  full  universal 
Action,  the  doctrine  everywhere  known,  and  enthusias- 
tically laid  to  heart  1     The  fit  pabulum,  in  these  times, 


THE   PHCENIX.  213 

'for  a  certain  rugged  workshop  intellect  and  heart,  no- 
'  wise  without  their  corresponding  workshop  strength  and 
'  ferocity,  it  requires  but  to  be  stated  in  such  scenes  to 
'  make  proselytes  enough.  —  Admirably  calculated  for 
'  destroying,  only  not  for  rebuilding !  It  spreads  like  5 
'  a  sort  of  Dog-madness  ;  till  the  whole  World-kennel  will 
'  be  rabid ;  then  woe  to  the  Huntsmen,  with  or  without 
'  their  whips  !  They  should  have  given  the  quadrupeds 
'  water,'  adds  he  ;  '  the  water,  namely,  of  Knowledge  and 
'  of  Life,  while  it  was  yet  time.'  10 

Thus,  if  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  can  be  relied  on,  we 
are  at  this  hour  in  a  most  critical  condition ;  beleaguered 
by  that  boundless  'Armament  of  Mechanisers  '  and  Un- 
believers, threatening  to   strip   us   bare!     'The  World,' 
says  he,  '  as  it  needs  must,  is  under  a  process  of  devasta-  15 
tion  and  waste,  which,  whether  by  silent  assiduous  cor- 
rosion, or  open  quicker  combustion,  as  the  case  chances, 
will   effectually   enough   annihilate   the   past   Forms    of 
Society  ;  replace  them  with  what  it  may.     For  the  pres- 
ent, it  is  contemplated  that  when  man's  whole  Spiritual  20 
Interests  are  once  divested^  these  innumerable  stript-off 
Garments  shall  mostly  be  burnt ;  but  the  sounder  Rags 
among  them   be  quilted   together   into  one  huge  Irish 
watchcoat  for  the  defence  of  the  Body  only ! '  —  This, 
we  think,  is  but  Job's-news  to  the  humane  reader.  25 

'  Nevertheless,'  cries  Teufelsdrockh,  '  who  can  hinder 
'  it ;  who  is  there  that  can  clutch  into  the  wheel-spokes  of 
'  Destiny,  and  say  to  the  Spirit  of  the  Time  :  Turn  back, 
'  I  command  thee  ?  —  Wiser  were  it  that  we  yielded  to 
'  the  Inevitable  and  Inexorable,  and  accounted  even  this  30 
'  the  best.' 

Nay,  might  not  an  attentive  Editor,  drawing  his  own 
inferences  from  what  stands  written,  conjecture  that 
Teufelsdrockh    individually   had    yielded    to    this    same 


214 


SARTOR   RES  ART  US. 


*  Inevitable  and  Inexorable '  heartily  enough ;  and  now 
sat  waiting  the  issue,  with  his  natural  diabolico-angelical 
Indifference,  if  not  even  Placidity?  Did  we  not  hear 
him  complain  that  the  World  was  a  'huge  Ragfair,'  and 
5  the  '  rags  and  tatters  of  old  Symbols '  were  raining-down 
everywhere,  like  to  drift  him  in,  and  suffocate  him  ? 
What  with  those  '  un hunted  Helots  '  of  his  ;  and  the  un- 
even sic  vos  fton  vobis  pressure,  and  hard-crashing  collision 
he  is  pleased  to  discern  in  existing  things  ;    what  with 

lo  the  so  hateful  '  empty  Masks,'  full  of  beetles  and  spiders, 
yet  glaring  out  on  him,  from  their  glass  eyes,  '  with 
a  ghastly  affectation  of  life,'  —  we  feel  entitled  to  con- 
clude him  even  willing  that  much  should  be  thrown  to 
the  Devil,  so  it  were  but  done  gently !     Safe  himself  in 

15  that  '  Pinnacle  of  Weissnichtwo,'  he  would  consent,  with 
a  tragic  solemnity,  that  the  monster  Utilitaria,  held 
back,  indeed,  and  moderated  by  nose-rings,  halters,  foot- 
shackles,  and  every  conceivable  modification  of  rope, 
should  go  forth  to  do  her  work ;  —  to  tread  down  old 

20  ruinous  Palaces  and  Temples  with  her  broad  hoof,  till 
the  whole  were  trodden  down,  that  new  and  better  might 
be  built !  Remarkable  in  this  point  of  view  are  the  fol- 
lowing sentences. 

'Society,'  says  he,  'is  not  dead:   that  Carcass,  which 

25  'you  call  dead  Society,  is  but  her  mortal  coil  which 
'  she  has  shuffled-off,  to  assume  a  nobler  ;  she  herself, 
'through  perpetual  metamorphoses,  in  fairer  and  fairer 
'  development,  has  to  live  till  Time  also  merge  in  Eternity. 
'Wheresoever   two   or   three  Living  Men  are  gathered 

30  *  together,  there  is  Society ;  or  there  it  will  be,  with  its 
'cunning  mechanisms  and  stupendous  structures,  over- 
'  spreading  this  little  Globe,  and  reaching  upwards  to 
'  Heaven  and  downwards  to  Gehenna :  for  always,  under 
'  one  or  the  other  figure,  it  has  two  authentic  Revelations, 


THE   PHCENIX.  215 

'  of  a  God  and  of  a  Devil ;  the  Pulpit,  namely,  and  the 
'Gallows.' 

Indeed,  we  already  heard  him  speak  of  '  Religion,  in 
unnoticed  nooks,  weaving  for  herself  new  Vestures ; '  — 
Teufelsdrockh  himself  being  one  of  the  loom-treadles  ?    5 
Elsewhere  he  quotes  without  censure  that  strange  apho- 
rism of  Saint-Simon's,  concerning  which  and  whom  so 
much  were  to  be  said :   ^'L'dge  d^or,  qu^u7ie  aveugle  tradi- 
tio7i  a  place  jusqu'ici  dans  le  passe,  est  devant  nous;  The 
golden  age,  which  a  blind  tradition  has  hitherto  placed  10 
in  the  Past,  is  Before  us.'  —  But  listen  again : 

'When  the  Phcenix  is  fanning  her  funeral  pyre,  will 
there  not  be  sparks  flying  !  Alas,  some  millions  of 
men,  and  among  them  such  as  a  Napoleon,  have  already 
been  licked  into  that  high-eddying  Flame,  and  like  15 
moths  consumed  there.  Still  also  have  we  to  fear  that 
incautious  beards  will  get  singed. 

*  For  the  rest,  in  what  year  of  grace  such  Phoenix-cre- 
mation will  be  completed,  you  need  not  ask.  The  law 
of  Perseverance  is  among  the  deepest  in  man:  by  20 
nature  he  hates  change ;  seldom  will  he  quit  his  old 
house  till  it  has  actually  fallen  about  his  ears.  Thus 
have  I  seen  Solemnities  linger  as  Ceremonies,  sacred 
Symbols  as  idle  Pageants,  to  the  extent  of  three- 
hundred  years  and  more  after  all  life  and  sacredness  25 
had  evaporated  out  of  them.  And  then,  finally,  what 
time  the  Phoenix  Death-Birth  itself  will  require,  depends 
on  unseen  contingencies.  —  Meanwhile,  would  Destiny 
offer  Mankind,  that  after,  say  two  centuries  of  convul- 
sion and  conflagration,  more  or  less  vivid,  the  fire-crea-  30 
tion  should  be  accomplished,  and  we  find  ourselves 
again  in  a  Living  Society,  and  no  longer  fighting  but 
working,  —  were  it  not  perhaps  prudent  in  Mankind  to 
strike  the  bargain  ?  ^ 


2i6  SARTOR   RESARV'US. 

Thus  is  Teufelsdrockh  content  that  old  sick  Society 
should  be  deliberately  burnt  (alas,  with  quite  other  fuel 
than  spice-wood);  in  the  faith  that  she  is  a  Phoenix;  and 
that  a  new  heavenborn  young  one  will  rise  out  of  her 
5  ashes  !  We  ourselves,  restricted  to  the  duty  of  Indicator, 
shall  forbear  commentary.  Meanwhile,  will  not  the  judi- 
cious reader  shake  his  head,  and  reproachfully,  yet  more 
in  sorrow  than  in  anger,  say  or  think :  From  a  Doctor 
utrinsqiie  Juris^  titular  Professor  in  a  University,  and  man 

10  to  whom  hitherto,  for  his  services,  Society,  bad  as  she  is, 
has  given  not  only  food  and  raiment  (of  a  kind)  but 
books,  tobacco  and  gukguk,  we  expected  more  gratitude 
to  his  benefactress  ;  and  less  of  a  blind  trust  in  the  future, 
which  resembles  that  rather  of  a  philosophical  Fatalist 

15  and  Enthusiast,  than  of  a  solid  householder  paying  scot- 
and-lot  in  a  Christian  country. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


OLD    CLOTHES. 


As  mentioned  above,  Teufelsdrockh,  though  a  Sanscu- 
lottist,  is  in  practice  probably  the  politest  man  extant ; 
his  whole  heart  and  life   are  penetrated  and  informed 

20  with  the  spirit  of  politeness  :  a  noble  natural  Courtesy 
shines  through  him,  beautifying  his  vagaries  :  like  sun- 
light, making  a  rosy-fingered,  rainbow-dyed  Aurora  out 
of  mere  aqueous  clouds ;  nay,  brightening  London-smoke 
itself  into  gold  vapour,  as  from  the  crucible  of  an  alche- 

25  mist.  Hear  in  what  earnest  though  fantastic  wise  he 
expresses  himself  on  this  head  : 

'  Shall  Courtesy  be  done  only  to  the  rich,  and  only  by 


OLD    CLOTHES.  217 

'the  rich?  In  Good-breeding,  which  differs,  if  at  all, 
'from  High-breeding,  only  as  it  gracefully  remembers 
'the  rights  of  others,  rather  than  gracefully  insists  on 
'  its  own  rights,  I  discern  no  special  connexion  with 
'  wealth  or  birth  :  but  rather  that  it  lies  in  human  nature  5 
'  itself,  and  is  due  from  all  men  towards  all  men.  Of  a 
'  truth,  were  your  Schoolmaster  at  his  post,  and  worth 
'  anything  when  there,  this,  with  so  much  else,  would  be 
'  reformed.  Nay,  each  man  were  then  also  his  neigh- 
'  hour's  schoolmaster;  till  at  length  a  rude-visaged  un-  10 
'  mannered  Peasant  could  no  more  be  met  with,  than  a 
'  Peasant  unacquainted  with  botanical  Physiology,  or  who 
'■  felt  not  that  the  clod  he  broke  was  created  in  Heaven. 

'  For  whether  thou  bear  a  sceptre  or  a  sledge-hammer, 
'  art  thou  not  ALIVE  ;  is  not  this  thy  brother  alive?  "There  15 
'  is  but  one  Temple  in  the  world,"  says  Novalis,  "  and 
'that  Temple  is  the  Body  of  Man.  Nothing  is  holier 
'  than  this  high  Form.  Bending  before  men  is  a  rever- 
'  ence  done  to  this  Revelation  in  the  Flesh.  We  touch 
'  Heaven,  when  we  lay  our  hands  on  a  human  Body."         20 

'  On  which  ground,  I  would  fain  carry  it  farther  than 
'  most  do ;  and  whereas  the  English  Johnson  only  bowed 
'  to  every  Clergyman,  or  man  with  a  shovel-hat,  I  would 
'  bow  to  every  Man  with  any  sort  of  hat,  or  with  no  hat 
'  whatever.  Is  he  not  a  Temple,  then  ;  the  visible  Mani-  25 
'  festation  and  Impersonation  of  the  Divinity  ?  And  yet, 
'  alas,  such  indiscriminate  bowing  serves  not.  For  there 
'  is  a  Devil  dwells  in  man,  as  well  as  a  Divinity ;  and  too 
'  often  the  bow  is  but  pocketed  by  the  fanner.  It  would 
'  go  to  the  pocket  of  Vanity  (which  is  your  clearest  phasis  30 
'  of  the  Devil,  in  these  times) ;  therefore  must  we  with- 
'  hold  it. 

'  The  gladder  am  I,  on  the  other  hand,  to  do  reverence 
'  to  those  Shells  and  outer  Husks  of  the  Body,  wherein 


2i8  ,  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

no  devilish  passion  any  longer  lodges,  but  only  the  pure 
emblem  and  effigies  of  Man  :  I  mean,  to  Empty,  or  even 
to  Cast  Clothes.  Nay,  is  it  not  to  Clothes  that  most  men 
do  reverence :  to  the  fine  frogged  broadcloth,  nowise  to 
the  "  straddling  animal  with  bandy  legs  "  which  it  holds, 
and  makes  a  Dignitary  of  ?  Who  ever  saw  any  Lord 
my-lorded  in  tattered  blanket,  fastened  with  wooden 
skewer  ?  Nevertheless,  I  say,  there  is  in  such  worship 
a  shade  of  hypocrisy,  a  practical  deception :  for  how 
often  does  the  Body  appropriate  what  was  meant  for  the 
Cloth  only !  Whoso  would  avoid  falsehood,  which  is 
the  essence  of  all  Sin,  will  perhaps  see  good  to  take  a 
different  course.  That  reverence  which  cannot  act  with- 
out obstruction  and  perversion  when  the  Clothes  are 
full,  may  have  free  course  when  they  are  empty.  Even 
as,  for  Hindoo  Worshippers,  the  Pagoda  is  not  less  sacred 
than  the  God  ;  so  do  I  too  worship  the  hollow  cloth  Gar- 
ment with  equal  fervour,  as  when  it  contained  the  Man  : 
nay,  with  more,  for  I  now  fear  no  deception,  of  myself 
or  of  others. 

'  Did  not  King  Toomtahard,  or,  in  other  words,  John 
Baliol,  reign  long  over  Scotland ;  the  man  John  Baliol 
being  quite  gone,  and  only  the  "  Toom  Tabard  "  (Empty 
Gown)  remaining  ?  What  still  dignity  dwells  in  a  suit 
of  Cast  Clothes  !  How  meekly  it  bears  its  honours  !  No 
haughty  looks,  no  scornful  gesture  :  silent  and  serene  it 
fronts  the  world ;  neither  demanding  worship  nor  afraid 
to  miss  it.  The  Hat  still  carries  the  physiognomy  of  its 
Head  :  but  the  vanity  and  the  stupidity,  and  goose-speech 
which  was  the  sign  of  these  two,  are  gone.  The  Coat- 
arm  is  stretched  out,  but  not  to  strike  ;  the  Breeches,  in 
modest  simplicity,  depend  at  ease,  and  now  at  last  have 
a  graceful  flow ;  the  Waistcoat  hides  no  evil  passion, 
no  riotous  desire ;  hunger  or  thirst  now  dwells  not  in  it. 


OLD    CLOTHES. 


219 


Thus  all  is  purged  from  the  grossness  of  sense,  from 
the  carking  cares  and  foul  vices  of  the  World  ;  and  rides 
there,  on  its  Clothes-horse ;  as,  on  a  Pegasus,  might 
some  skyey  Messenger,  or  purified  Apparition,  visiting 
our  low  Earth.  5 

'  Often,  while  I  sojourned  in  that  monstrous  tuberosity 
of  Civilized  Life,  the  Capital  of  England  ;  and  meditated, 
and  questioned  Destiny,  under  that  ink-sea  of  vapour, 
black,  thick,  and  multifarious  as  Spartan  broth ;  and 
was  one  lone  Soul  amid  those  grinding  millions  ; — often  10 
have  I  turned  into  their  Old-Clothes  Market  to  worship. 
With  awe-struck  heart  I  walk  through  that  Monmouth 
Street,  with  its  empty  Suits,  as  through  a  Sanhedrim  of 
stainless  Ghosts.  Silent  are  they,  but  expressive  in  their 
silence  :  the  past  witnesses  and  instruments  of  Woe  and  15 
Joy,  of  Passions,  Virtues,  Crimes,  and  all  the  fathomless 
tumult  of  Good  and  Evil  in  "  the  Prison  men  call  Life." 
Friends !  trust  not  the  heart  of  that  man  for  whom  old 
Clothes  are  not  venerable.  W^atch,  too,  with  reverence, 
that  bearded  Jewish  High-priest,  who  with  hoarse  voice,  20 
like  some  Angel  of  Doom,  summons  them  from  the  four 
winds !  On  his  head,  like  the  Pope,  he  has  three  Hats, 
—  a  real  triple  tiara ;  on  either  hand  are  the  similitude 
of  wings,  whereon  the  summoned  Garments  come  to 
alight ;  and  ever,  as  he  slowly  cleaves  the  air,  sounds  25 
forth  his  deep  fateful  note,  as  if  through  a  trumpet  he 
were  proclaiming  :  "  Ghosts  of  Life,  come  to  Judgment !  " 
Reck  not,  ye  fluttering  Ghosts  :  he  will  purify  you  in  his 
Purgatory,  with  fire  and  with  water ;  and,  one  day,  new- 
created  ye  shall  reappear.  O,  let  him  in  whom  the  30 
flame  of  Devotion  is  ready  to  go  out,  who  has  never 
worshipped,  and  knows  not  what  to  worship,  pace  and 
repace,  with  austerest  thought,  the  pavement  of  Mon- 
mouth  Street,  and  say  whether  his  heart  and  his  eyes 


2  20  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  Still  continue  dry.  If  Field  Lane,  with  its  long  fluttering 
'  rows  of  yellow  handkerchiefs,  be  a  Dionysius'  Ear,  where, 
'  in  stifled  jarring  hubbub,  we  hear  the  Indictment  which 
'  Poverty  and  Vice  bring  against  lazy  Wealth,  that  it  has 
5  *  left  them  there  cast-out  and  trodden  under  foot  of  Want, 
'  Darkness  and  the  Devil,  —  then  is  Monmouth  Street  a 
'  Mirza's  Hill,  where,  in  motley  vision,  the  whole  Pageant 
'  of  Existence  passes  awfully  before  us  ;  with  its  wail  and 
*  jubilee,  mad  loves  and  mad  hatreds,  church-bells  and 
lo  'gallows-ropes,  farce-tragedy,  beast-godhood,  —  the  Bed- 
'  lam  of  Creation  ! ' 

To  most  men,  as  it  does  to  ourselves,  all  this  will  seem 
overcharged.  We  too  have  walked  through  Monmouth 
Street,  but  with  little  feeling  of  '  Devotion : '  probably  in 

15  part  because  the  contemplative  process  is  so  fatally  broken 
in  upon  by  the  brood  of  money-changers,  who  nestle  in 
that  Church,  and  importune  the  worshipper  with  merely 
secular  proposals.  Whereas  Teufelsdrockh  might  be  in 
that  happy  middle   state,  which  leaves   to   the  Clothes- 

20  broker  no  hope  either  of  sale  or  of  purchase,  and  so  be 
allowed  to  linger  there  without  molestation.  ■  Something 
we  would  have  given  to  see  the  little  philosophical  figure, 
with  its  steeple-hat  and  loose  flowing  skirts,  and  eyes  in 
a  fine  frenzy,  '  pacing  and  repacing  in  austerest  thought ' 

25  that  foolish  Street;  which  to  him  was  a  true  Delphic 
avenue,  and  supernatural  Whispering-gallery,  where  the 
'  Ghosts  of  Life '  rounded  strange  secrets  in  his  ear.  O 
thou  philosophic  Teufelsdrockh,  that  listenest  while  others 
only  gabble,  and  with  thy  quick  tympanum  hearest  the 

30  grass  grow  ! 

At  the  same  time,  is  it  not  strange  that,  in  Paper-bag 
Documents  destined  for  an  English  work,  there  exists 
nothing   like   an    authentic   diary  of    this  his  sojourn  in 


ORGANIC   FILAMENTS.  221 

London ;  and  of  his  Meditations  among  the  Clothes- 
shops  only  the  obscurest  emblematic  shadows  ?  Neither, 
in  conversation  (for,  indeed,  he  was  not  a  man  to  pester 
you  with  his  Travels),  have  we  heard  him  more  than 
allude  to  the  subject. 

For  the  rest,  however,  it  cannot  be  uninteresting  that 
we  here  find  how  early  the  significance  of  Clothes  had 
dawned  on  the  now  so  distinguished  Clothes-Professor. 
Might  we  but  fancy  it  to  have  been  even  in  Monmouth 
Street,  at  the  bottom  of  our  own  English  '  ink-sea,'  that 
this  remarkable  Volume  first  took  being,  and  shot  forth 
its  salient  point  in  his  soul,  —  as  in  Chaos  did  the  Egg 
of  Eros,  one  day  to  be  hatched  into  a  Universe ! 


CHAPTER    VII. 


ORGANIC    FILAMENTS. 


For  us,  who  happen  to  live  while  the  World-Phoenix  is 
burning  herself,  and  burning  so  slowly  that,  as  Teufels-  15 
drockh  calculates,  it  were  a  handsome  bargain  would  she 
engage  to  have  done  '  within  two  centuries,'  there  seems     y^ 
to  lie  but  an  ashy  prospect.     Not  altogether  so,  however,    ^ 
does  the    Professor  figure  it.     '  In    the    living    subject,' 
says  he,  '  change  is  wont  to  be  gradual :  thus,  while  the  20 
'  serpent  sheds  its  old  skin,  the  new  is  already  formed 
'  beneath.      Little    knowest    thou    of    the    burning    of    a 
'World-Phoenix,  who  fanciest  that  she  must  first  burn- 
'  out,  and  lie  as  a  dead  cinereous  heap ;  and  therefrom 
'the  young  one  start-up  by  miracle,  and  fly  heavenward.  25 
'  Far   otherwise  !      In  that   Fire-whirlwind,   Creation  and^~n 
'  Destruction  proceed  together ;  ever  as  the  ashes  of  the    J 


30 


222  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

'  Old  are  blown  about,  do  organic  filaments  of  the  New 
'  mysteriously  spin  themselves  :  and  amid  the  rushing  and 
'  the  waving  of  the  Whirlwind-element,  come  tones  of  a 
'  melodious  Deathsong,  which  end  not  but  in  tones  of  a 
'  more  melodious  Birthsong.  Nay,  look  into  the  Fire- 
'  whirlwind  with  thy  own  'eyes,  and  thou  wilt  see.'  Let 
us  actually  look,  then  :  to  poor  individuals,  who  cannot 
expect  to  live  two  centuries,  those  same  organic  filaments, 
m3^steriously  spinning  themselves,  will  be  the  best  part 
of  the  spectacle.  First,  therefore,  this  of  Mankind  in 
general : 

'  In  vain  thou  deniest  it,'  says  the  Professor;  'thou  art 
my  Brother.  Thy  very  Hatred,  thy  very  Envy,  those 
foolish  Lies  thou  tellest  of  me  in  thy  splenetic  humour  : 
what  is  all  this  but  an  inverted  Sympathy?  Were  I  a 
Steam-engine,  wouldst  thou  take  the  trouble  to  tell  lies 
of  me  ?  Not  thou  !  I  should  grind  all  unheeded, 
whether  badly  or  well. 

*  Wondrous  truly  are  the  bonds  that  unite  us  one  and 
all ;  whether  by  the  soft  binding  of  Love,  or  the  iron 
chaining  of  Necessity,  as  we  like  to  choose  it.  More 
than  once  have  I  said  to  myself,  of  some  perhaps  whim- 
sically strutting  Figure,  such  as  provokes  whimsical 
thoughts :  "  Wert  thou,  my  little  Brotherkin,  suddenly 
covered-up  within  the  largest  imaginable  Glass-bell,  — 
what  a  thing  it  were,  not  for  thyself  only^but  for  the 
world  !  Post  Letters,  more  or  fewer,  from  all  the  four 
winds,  impinge  against  thy  Glass  walls,  but  have  to  drop 
unread  :  neither  from  within  comes  there  question  or 
response  into  any  Postbag ;  thy  thoughts  fall  into  no 
friendly  ear  or  heart,  thy  Manufacture  into  no  purchas- 
ing hand  :  thou  art  no  longer  a  circulating  venous-arterial 
Heart,  that,  taking  and  giving,  circulatest  through  all 
Space  and  all  Time  :  there  has  a  Hole  fallen-out  in  the 


ORGANIC  FILAMENTS. 


223 


immeasurable,    universal    World-tissue,   which   must    be 
darned-up  again  !  " 

'  Such    venous-arterial    circulation,    of    Letters,   verbal 
Messages,  paper  and  other  Packages,  going   out  from 
him  and  coming   in,  are   a   blood-circulation,  visible   to    5 
the  eye  :  but  the  finer  nervous  circulation,  by  which  all 
things,  the  minutest  that  he  does,  minutely  influence  all 
men,  and  the  very  look  of  his   face   blesses   or  curses 
whomso  it  lights  on,  and  so  generates  ever  new  blessing 
or  new  cursing:  all  this  you  cannot  see,  but  only  imagine.  10 
I  say,  there  is  not  a  red  Indian,  hunting  by  Lake  Winni- 
pic,  can  quarrel  with   his  squaw,  but  the  whole  world 
must  smart  for  it :  will  not  the  price  of  beaver  rise  ?     It 
is  a  mathematical  fact  that  the  casting  of  this  pebble 
from  my  hand  alters  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  Uni-  15 
verse. 

'  If  now  an  existing  generation  of  men  stand  so  woven 
together,    not    less    indissolubly   does    generation    with 
generation.     Hast    thou   ever  meditated  on  that  word, 
Tradition  :  how  we  inherit   not   Life  only,  but   all  the  20 
garniture  and  form  of  Life  ;  and  work,  and  speak,  and 
even  think  and  feel,  as  our  Fathers,  and  primeval  grand- 
fathers, from  the  beginning,  have  given  it  us?  —  Who 
printed  thee,  for  example,  this  unpretending  Volume  on 
the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  ?     Not  the  Herren  Stillschwei-  25 
gen   and   Company :  but   Cadmus  of  Thebes,  Faust  of 
Mentz,  and  innumerable  others  whom  thou  knowest  not. 
Had  there  been  no  Mcesogothic  Ulfila,  there  had  been 
no  English  Shakspeare,  or  a  different  one.     Simpleton  ! 
it  was  Tubalcain  that  made  thy  very  Tailor's  needle,  and  30 
sewed  that  court-suit  of  thine. 

'  Yes,  truly,  if  Nature  is  one,  and  a  living  indivisible 
whole,  much  more  is  Mankind,  the  Image  that  reflects 
and   creates   Nature,    without   which    Nature   were   not.     \ 


224 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


As  palpable  life-streams  in  that  wondrous  Individual 
Mankind,  among  so  many  life-streams  that  are  not 
palpable,  flow  on  those  main-currents  of  what  we  call 
Opinion;  as  preserved  in  Institutions,  Polities,  Churches, 
above  all  in  Books.  Beautiful  it  is  to  understand  and 
know  that  a  Thought  did  never  yet  die ;  that  as  thou, 
the  originator  thereof,  hast  gathered  it  and  created  it 
from  the  whole  Past,  so  thou  wilt  transmit  it  to  the 
whole  Future.  It  is  thus  that  the  heroic  heart,  the 
seeing  eye  of  the  first  times,  still  feels  and  sees  in  us 
of  the  latest ;  that  the  Wise  Man  stands  ever  encom- 
passed, and  spiritually  embraced,  by  a  cloud  of  witnesses 
and  brothers ;  and  there  is  a  living,  literal  Cojiwiiinion 
of  Saints,  wide  as  the  World  itself,  and  as  the  History 
of  the  World. 

'  Noteworthy  also,  and  serviceable  for  the  progress  of 
this  same  Individual,  wilt  thou  find  his  subdivision  into 
Generations.  Generations  are  as  the  Days  of  toilsome 
Mankind  :  Death  and  Birth  are  the  vesper  and  the  matin 
bells,  that  summon  Mankind  to  sleep,  and  to  rise  re- 
freshed for  new  advancement.  What  the  Father  has 
made,  the  Son  can  make  and  enjoy ;  but  has  also  work 
of  his  own  appointed  him.  Thus  all  things  wax,  and 
roll  onwards ;  Arts,  Establishments,  Opinions,  nothing 
is  completed,  but  ever  completing.  Newton  has  learned 
to  see  what  Kepler  saw;  but  there  is  also  a  fresh  heaven- 
derived  force  in  Newton ;  he  must  mount  to  still  higher 
points  of  vision.  So  too  the  Hebrew  Lawgiver  is,  in  due 
time,  followed  by  an  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  In  the 
business  of  Destruction,  as  this  also  is  from  time  to 
time  a  necessary  work,  thou  findest  a  like  sequence  and 
perseverance  :  for  Luther  it  was  as  yet  hot  enough  to 
stand  by  that  burning  of  the  Pope's  Bull;  Voltaire  could 
not  warm  himself  at  the  glimmering  ashes,  but  required 


ORGANIC  FILAMENTS. 


225 


*  quite  other  fuel.  Thus  likewise,  I  note,  the  EngUsh  Whig 
'has,  in  the  second  generation,  become  an  English  Radi- 
'  cal ;  who,  in  the  third  again,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will 
'become  an  English  Rebuilder.  Find  Mankind  where 
'  thou  wilt,  thou  findest  it  in  living  movement,  in  progress  5 
'  faster  or  slower :  the  Phoenix  soars  aloft,  hovers  with 
'  outstretched  wings,  filling  Earth  with  her  music ;  or,  as 
'now,  she  sinks,  and  with  spheral  swan-song  immolates 
'  herself  in  flame,  that  she  may  soar  the  higher  and  sing 
'  the  clearer.'  10 

Let  the  friends  of  social  order,  in  such  a  disastrous 
period,  lay  this  to  heart,  and  derive  from  it  any  little 
comfort  they  can.  We  subjoin  another  passage,  con- 
cerning Titles  : 

'Remark,  not  without  surprise,'  says  Teufelsdrockh,  15 
how  all  high  Titles  of  Honour  come  hitherto  from  Fight- 
ing. Your  Herzog  (Duke,  Dux)  is  Leader  of  Armies ; 
your  Earl  {/arl)  is  Strong  Man ;  your  Marshal,  cavalry 
Horse-shoer.  A  Millennium,  or  reign  of  Peace  and 
Wisdom,  having  from  of  old  been  prophesied,  and  be-  20 
coming  now  daily  more  and  more  indubitable,  may  it  not 
be  apprehended  that  such  Fighting-titles  will  cease  to  be 
palatable,  and  new  and  higher  need  to  be  devised  ? 

'  The    only    Title    wherein    I,    with    confidence,    trace 
eternity,    is    that    of    King.      Konig   (King),    anciently  25 
Koufting,  means   Ken-ning  (Cunning),  or  which   is  the 
same  thing,    Can-ning.      Ever   must    the    Sovereign    of 
Mankind  be  fitly  entitled  King.' 

'  Well,  also,'  says  he  elsewhere,  '  was  it  written  by 
Theologians  :  a  King  rules  by  divine  right.  He  carries  30 
in  him  an  authority  from  God,  or  man  will  never  give  it 
him.  Can  I  choose  my  own  King  ?  I  can  choose  my 
own  King  Popinjay,  and  play  what  farce  or  tragedy  I 
may  with  him  :   but   he  who  is  to  be  my   Ruler,  whose 


2  26  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

*  will  is  to  be  higher  than  my  will,  was  chosen  for  me  in 
i  *  Heaven.  Neither  except  in  such  Obedience  to  the 
[^*  Heaven-chosen  is  Freedom  so  much  as  conceivable.' 

The  Editor  will  here  admit  that,  among  all  the  won- 
5  drous  provinces  of  Teufelsdrockh's  spiritual  world,  there 
is  none  he  walks  in  with  such  astonishment,  hesitation, 
and  even  pain,  as  in  the  Political.  How,  with  our 
English  love  of  Ministry  and  Opposition,  and  that  gen- 
erous  conflict  of    Parties,    mind    warming  itself  against 

lo  mind  in  their  mutual  wrestle  for  the  Public  Good,  by 
which  wrestle,  indeed,  is  our  invaluable  Constitution  kept 
warm  and  alive ;  how  shall  we  domesticate  ourselves  in 
this  spectral  Necropolis,  or  rather  City  both  of  the  Dead 
and  of  the  Unborn,  where  the  Present  seems  little  other 

15  than  an  inconsiderable  Film  dividing  the  Past  and  the 
Future  ?  In  those  dim  longdrawn  expanses,  all  is  so 
immeasurable ;  much  so  disastrous,  ghastly  ;  your  very 
radiances,  and  straggling  light-beams,  have  a  supernatural 
character.     And  then  with  such  an  indifference,  such  a 

20  prophetic  peacefulness  (accounting  the  inevitably  coming 
as  already  here,  to  him  all  one  whether  it  be  distant  by 
centuries  or  only  by  days),  does- he  sit;  —  and  live,  you 
would  say,  rather  in  any  other  age  than  in  his  own !  It 
is  our  painful  duty  to  announce,  or  repeat,  that,  looking 

25  into  this  man,  we  discern  a  deep,  silent,  slow-burning, 
inextinguishable  Radicalism,  such  as  fills  us  with  shud- 
dering admiration. 

/  Thus,  for  example,  he  appears  to  make  little  even  of 
the  Elective  Franchise  ;  at  least  so  we  interpret  the  fol- 

30  lowing:  'Satisfy  yourselves,'  he  says,  'by  universal,  in- 
'  dubitable  experiment,  even  as  ye  are  now  doing  or  will 
'  do,  whether  Freedom,  heavenborn  and  leading  heaven- 

*  ward,   and  so   vitally   essential   for  us   all,   cannot  per- 


ORGANIC  FILAMENTS.  227 

'  adventure  be  mechanically  hatched  and  brought  to  light 
'  in  that  same  Ballot-Box  of  yours ;  or  at  worst  in  some 
'  other  discoverable  or  devisable  Box,  Edifice,  or  Steam- 
'  mechanism.  It  were  a  mighty  convenience  ;  and  beyond 
'  all  feats  of  manufacture  witnessed  hitherto:'  Is  Teufels-  5 
drockh  acquainted  with  the  British  Constitution,  even 
slightly  ?  —  He  says,  under  another  figure  :  '  But  after 
'  all,  were  the  problem,  as  indeed  it  now  everywhere  is, 
'  To  rebuild  your  old  House  from  the  top  downwards 
'  (since  you  must  live  in  it  the  while),  what  better,  what  10 
'  other,  than  the  Representative  Machine  will  serve  your 
'  turn  ?  Meanwhile,  however,  mock  me  not  with  the  name 
'  of  Free,  "  when  you  have  but  knit-up  my  chains  into 
'ornamental  festoons.'" — Or  what  will  any  member  of 
the  Peace  Society  make  of  such  an  assertion  as  this:  15 
'  The  lower  people  everywhere  desire  War.  Not  so  un- 
'  wisely ;  there  is  then  a  demand  for  lower  people  —  to  be 
' shot ! ' 

Gladly,  therefore,  do  we  emerge  from  those  soul-con- 
fusing labyrinths  of  speculative  Radicalism,  into  some-  20 
what  clearer  regions.  Here,  looking  round,  as  was  our 
hest,  for  '  organic  filaments,'  we  ask,  may  not  this,  touch- 
ing '  Hero-Worship,' be  of  the  number.'*  It  seems  of  a 
cheerful  character  ;  yet  so  quaint,  so  mystical,  one  knows 
not  what,  or  how  little,  may  lie  under  it.  Our  readers  25 
shall  look  with  their  own  eyes  : 

'  True  is  it  that,  in  these  days,  man  can  do  almost  all 
'  things,  only  not  obey.  True  likewise  that  whoso  cannot 
'  obey  cannot  be  free,  still  less  bear  rule  ;  he  that  is  the 
'  inferior  of  nothing,  can  be  the  superior  of  nothing,  the  30 
*  equal  of  nothing.  Nevertheless,  believe  not  that  man 
'  has  lost  his  faculty  of  Reverence ;  that  if  it  slumber  in 
'him,  it  has  gone  dead.  Painful  for  man  is  that  same 
'  rebellious  Independence,  when  it  has  become  inevitable  ; 


2  28  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

'  only  in  loving  companionship  with  his  fellows  does  he 

*  feel  safe ;  only  in  reverently  bowing  down  before  the 
'  Higher  does  he  feel  himself  exalted. 

'  Or  what  if  the  character  of  our  so  troublous  Era  lay 
5  '  even   in   this :    that   man   had  forever   cast   away  Fear, 

*  which  is  the  lower ;  but  not  yet  risen  into  perennial 
'  Reverence,  which  is  the  higher  and  highest? 

'  Meanwhile,  observe  with  joy,  so  cunningly  has  Nature 

'  ordered  it,  that  whatsoever  man  ought  to  obey  he  cannot 

lo  'but  obey.     Before  no  faintest  revelation  of  the  Godlike 

'  did  he  ever  stand  irreverent ;  least  of  all,  \vhen  the  God- 

*  like  showed  itself  revealed  in  his  fellow-man.  Thus  is 
'  there  a  true  religious  Loyalty  forever  rooted  in  his  heart ; 
'  nay,  in  all  ages,  even  in  ours,  it  manifests  itself  as  a 

15  'more  or  less  orthodox  He?-o-zvo?-ship.  In  w^hich  fact, 
'  that  Hero-worship  exists,  has  existed,  and  will  forever 

*  exist,  universally  among  Mankind,  mayest  thou  discern 
'  the  corner-stone  of  living-rock,  whereon  all  Polities  for 
'the  remotest  time  may  stand  secure.' 

20  Do  our  readers  discern  any  such  corner-stone,  or  even 
so  much  as  what  Teufelsdrockh  is  looking  at  ?  He  ex- 
claims, '  Or  hast  thou  forgotten  Paris  and  Voltaire?  How 
'  the  aged,  withered  man,  though  but  a  Sceptic,  Mocker, 
'  and  millinery  Court-poet,  yet  because  even  he  seemed 

25  '  the  Wisest,  Best,  could  drag  mankind  at  his  chariot- 
'  wheels,  so  that  princes  coveted  a  smile  from  him,  and 
'  the  loveliest  of  France  would  have  laid  their  hair  be- 
'  neath  his  feet !  Ail  Paris  was  one  vast  Temple  of  Hero- 
'  worship  ;  though  their  Divinity,  moreover,  was  of  feature 

30  '  too  apish. 

'But  if  such  things,'  continues  he,  'were  done  in  the 
'  dry  tree,  what  will  be  done  in  the  green  ?  If,  in  the 
'  most  parched  season  of  Man's  History,  in  the  most 
'  parched  spot  of  Europe,  when  Parisian  life  was  at  best 


ORGANIC  FILAMENTS.  229 

but    a   scientific   Ho7'tiis    Siccus,   bedizened    with    some 
Italian  Gumflowers,  such  virtue  could  come  out  of  it; 
what  is  to  be  looked  for  when  life  again  waves  leafy  and 
bloomy,  and  your  Hero-Divinity  shall  have  nothing  ape- 
like, but  be  wholly  human  ?     Know  that  there  is  in  man    5 
a  quite  indestructible  Reverence  for  whatsoever  holds  of 
Heaven,   or   even   plausibly   counterfeits   such  holding. 
Shew  the  dullest  clodpole,  shew  the  haughtiest  feather- 
head,  that  a  soul  higher  than  himself  is  actually  here  ; 
were  his  knees  stiffened  into  brass,  he  must  down  and  10 
worship.' 
Organic  filaments,  of  a   more  authentic  sort,  mysteri- 
ously spinning  themselves,  some  will  perhaps  discover  in 
the  following  passage : 

'There   is    no    Church,    sayest    thou.'*     The    voice   of  15 
'  Prophecy  has  gone  dumb  ?     This  is  even  what  I  dis- 
'  pute :    but,  in  any  case,  hast  thou  not  still  Preaching 
'  enough  ?     A   Preaching  Friar   settles   himself  in  every 

*  village  ;  and  builds  a  pulpit,  which  he  calls  Newspaper. 

'  Therefrom  he  preaches  what  most  momentous  doctrine  20 
'  is  in  him,  for  man's  salvation  ;  and  dost  not  thou  listen, 

*  and  believe  ?  Look  well,  thou  seest  everywhere  a  new 
'  Clergy  of  the  Mendicant  Orders,  some  bare-footed,  some 
'  almost  bare-backed,  fashion  itself  into  shape,  and  teach 

'  and  preach,  zealously  enough,  for  copper  alms  and  the  25 
'  love  of  God.  These  break  in  pieces  the  ancient  idols  ; 
'  and,  though  themselves  too  often  reprobate,  as  idol- 
'  breakers  are  wont  to  be,  mark  out  the  sites  of  new 
'  Churches,  where  the  true  God-ordained,  that  are  to 
'  follow,  may  find  audience,  and  minister.  Said  I  not,  30 
'  Before  the  old  skin  was  shed,  the  new  had  formed  itself 
'  beneath  it  ? ' 

Perhaps    also    in    the    following ;    wherewith    we    now 
hasten  to  knit-up  this  ravelled  sleeve  : 


230  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

'  But  there  is  no  Religion  ? '  reiterates  the  Professor. 
Fool  !  I  tell  thee,  there  is.  Hast  thou  well  considered 
all  that  lies  in  this  immeasurable  froth-ocean  we  name 
Literature  ?  Fragments  of  a  genuine  OiwixQh-Homi- 
Ictic  lie  scattered  there,  which  Time  will  assort  :  nay 
fractions  even  of  a  Liturgy  could  I  point  out.  And 
knowest  thou  no  Prophet,  even  in  the  vesture,  environ- 
ment, and  dialect  of  this  age  ?  None  to  whom  the  God- 
like had  revealed  itself,  through  all  meanest  and  highest 
forms  of  the  Common  ;  and  by  him  been  again  pro- 
phetically revealed  :  in  whose  inspired  melody,  even  in 
these  rag-gathering  and  rag-burning  days,  Man's  Life 
again  begins,  were  it  but  afar  off,  to  be  divine  t  Know- 
est thou  none  such  t  I  know  him,  and  name  him  — 
Goethe. 

'  But  thou  as  yet  standest  in  no  Temple  ;  joinest  in  no 
Psalm-worship ;  feelest  well  that,  where  there  is  no 
ministering  Priest,  the  people  perish }  Be  of  comfort  ! 
Thou  art  not  alone,  if  thou  have  Faith.  Spake  we  not 
of  a  Communion  of  Saints,  unseen,  yet  not  unreal, 
accompanying  and  brother-like  embracing  thee,  so  thou 
be  worthy  ?  Their  heroic  Sufferings  rise  up  melodiously 
together  to  Heaven,  out  of  all  lands,  and  out  of  all  times, 
as  a  sacred  Miserere;  their  heroic  Actions  also,  as  a 
boundless  everlasting  Psalm  of  Triumph.  Neither  say 
that  thou  hast  now  no  Symbol  of  the  Godlike.  Is  not 
God's  Universe  a  Symbol  of  the  Godlike ;  is  not  Im- 
mensity a  Temple  ;  is  not  Man's  History,  and  Men's 
History,  a  perpetual  Evangel  ?  Listen,  and  for  organ- 
music  thou  wilt  ever,  as  of  old,  hear  the  Morning  Stars 
sing  together.' 


NATURAL   SUPERNATURALISM.  231 

CHAPTER    VIII. 

NATURAL    SUPERNATURALISM. 

It  is  in  his  stupendous  Section,  headed  Natural  Super- 
naturalism^  that  the  Professor  first  becomes  a  Seer ;  and, 
after  long  effort,  such  as  we  have  witnessed,  finally  sub- 
dues under  his  feet  this  refractory  Clothes-Philosophy, 
and  takes  victorious  possession  thereof.  Phantasms  5 
enough  he  has  had  to  struggle  with ;  '  Cloth-webs  and 
Cob-webs,'  of  Imperial  Mantles,  Superannuated  Symbols, 
and  what  not :  yet  still  did  he  courageously  pierce  through. 
Nay,  worst  of  all,  two  quite  mysterious,  world-embracing 
Phantasms,  Time  and  Space,  have  ever  hovered  round  ^o 
him,  perplexing  and  bewildering :  but  with  these  also  he 
now  resolutely  grapples,  these  also  he  victoriously  rends 
asunder.  In  a  word,  he  has  looked  fixedly  on  Existence, 
till,  one  after  the  other,  its  earthly  hulls  and  garnitures 
have  all  melted  away;  and  now,  to  his  rapt  vision,  the  15 
interior  celestial  Holy  of  Holies  lies  disclosed. 

Here,  therefore,  properly  it  is  that  the  Philosophy  of 
Clothes  attains  to  Transcendentalism ;  this  last  leap,  can 
we  but  clear  it,  takes  us  safe  into  the  promised  land, 
where  Falingenesia,  in  all  senses,  may  be  considered  as  20 
beginning.  '  Courage,  then  ! '  may  our  Diogenes  exclaim, 
with  better  right  than  Diogenes  the  First  once  did.  This 
stupendous  Section  we,  after  long  painful  meditation,  have 
found  not  to  be  unintelligible ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  be 
clear,  nay  radiant,  and  all-illuminating.  Let  the  reader,  25 
turning  on  it  what  utmost  force  of  speculative  intellect  is 
in  him,  do  his  part  ;  as  we,  by  judicious  selection  and 
adjustment,  shall  study  to  do  ours : 

'  Deep  has  been,  and  is,  the  significance  of  Miracles,' 
thus  quietly  begins  the  Professor ;  '  far  deeper  perhaps  30 


232  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

than  we  imagine.  Meanwhile,  the  question  of  questions 
were  :  What  specially  is  a  Miracle  ?  To  that  Dutch  King 
of  Siam,  an  icicle  had'  been  a  miracle ;  whoso  had  car- 
ried with  him  an  air-pump  and  vial  of  vitriolic  ether, 
might  have  worked  a  miracle.  To  my  Horse,  again,  who 
unhappily  is  still  more  unscientific,  do  not  I  work  a 
miracle,  and  magical  ^'Open  sesame/'^  every  time  I  please 
to  pay  twopence,  and  open  for  him  an  impassable  Schlag- 
baujn,  or  shut  Turnpike  ? 

' "  But  is  not  a  real  Miracle  simply  a  violation  of  the 
Laws  of  Nature  ?  "  ask  several.  Whom  I  answer  by  this 
new  question :  What  are  the  Laws  of  Nature  ?  To  me 
perhaps  the  rising  of  one  from  the  dead  were  no  viola- 
tion of  these  Laws,  but  a  confirmation  ;  were  some  far 
deeper  Law,  now  first  penetrated  into,  and  by  Spiritual 
Force,  even  as  the  rest  have  all  been,  brought  to  bear 
on  us  with  its  Material  Force. 

'  Here  too  may  some  inquire,  not  without  astonishment : 
On  what  ground  shall  one,  that  can  make  Iron  swim, 
come  and  declare  that  therefore  he  can  teach  Religion  ? 
To  us,  truly,  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  such  declara- 
tion were  inept  enough  ;  which  nevertheless  to  our  fathers, 
of  the  First  Century,  was  full  of  meaning. 

' ''  But  is  it  not  the  deepest  Law  of  Nature  that  she  be 
constant  ?  "  cries  an  illuminated  class  :  "  Is  not  the  Ma- 
chine of  the  Universe  fixed  to  move  by  unalterable 
rules  ? "  Probable  enough,  good  friends :  nay,  I  too, 
must  believe  that  the  God,  whom  ancient  inspired  men 
assert  to  be  ''  without  variableness  or  shadow  of  turn- 
ing," does  indeed  never  change ;  that  Nature,  that  the 
Universe,  which  no  one  whom  it  so  pleases  can  be 
prevented  from  calling  a  Machine,  does  move  by  the 
most  unalterable  rules.  And  now  of  you  too  I  make 
the  old    inquiry :    What   those   same   unalterable    rules, 


NATURAL   SUPERNATUKALISM.  233 

forming    the    complete    Statute-Book    of    Nature,    may 
possibly  be  ? 

'They  stand  written  in  our  Works  of  Science,  say  you; 
in  the  accumulated  records  of  man's  Experience  ? — Was 
Man  with  his  Experience  present  at  the  Creation,  then,  5 
to  see  how  it  all  went  on  ?  Have  any  deepest  scientific 
individuals  yet  dived  down  to  the  foundations  of  the 
Universe,  and  gauged  everything  there  ?  Did  the  Maker 
take  them  into  His  counsel ;  that  they  read  His  ground- 
plan  of  the  incomprehensible  All ;  and  can  say,  This  10 
stands  marked  therein,  and  no  more  than  this  ?  Alas  ! 
not  in  anywise  !  These  scientific  individuals  have  been 
nowhere  but  where  we  also  are ;  have  seen  some  hand- 
breadths  deeper  than  we  see  into  the  Deep  that  is  infi- 
nite, without  bottom  as  without  shore.  15 

'  Laplace's  Book  on  the  Stars,  wherein  he  exhibits  that 
certain  Planets,  with  their  Satellites,  gyrate  round  our 
worthy  Sun,  at  a  rate  and  in  a  course,  which,  by  greatest 
good  fortune,  he  and  the  like  of  him  have  succeeded  in 
detecting,  —  is  to  me  as  precious  as  to  another.  But  is  20 
this  what  thou  namest  "  Mechanism  of  the  Heavens," 
and  "  System  of  the  World  ;  "  this,  wherein  Sirius  and 
the  Pleiades,  and  all  Herschel's  Fifteen-thousand  Suns 
per  minute,  being  left  out,  some  paltry  handful  of  Moons, 
and  inert  Balls  had  been  —  looked  at,  nicknamed,  and  25 
marked  in  the  Zodiacal  Way-bill ;  so  that  we  can  now 
prate  of  their  Whereabout ;  their  How,  their  Why,  their 
What,  being  hid  from  us,  as  in  the  signless  Inane .? 

'  System  of  Nature  !  To  the  wisest  man,  wide  as  is  his 
vision,  Nature  remains  of  quite  infi7iite  depth,  of  quite  30 
infinite  expansion  ;  and  all  Experience  thereof  limits 
itself  to  some  few  computed  centuries,  and  measured 
square-miles.  The  course  of  Nature's  phases,  on  this 
our  little  fraction  of  a  Planet,  is  partially  known  to  us : 


234  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

but  who  knows  what  deeper  courses  these  depend  on ; 
what  infinitely  larger  Cycle  (of  causes)  our  little  Epicycle 
revolves  on  ?  To  the  Minnow  every  cranny  and  pebble, 
and  quality  and  accident,  of  its  little  native  Creek  may 
have  become  familiar  :  but  does  the  Minnow  understand 
the  Ocean  Tides  and  periodic  Currents,  the  Trade- 
winds,  and  Monsoons,  and  Moon's  Eclipses ;  by  all 
which  the  condition  of  its  little  Creek  is  regulated,  and 
may,  from  time  to  time  (////miraculously  enough),  be 
quite  overset  and  reversed?  Such  a  minnow  is  Man; 
his  Creek  this  Planet  Earth ;  his  Ocean  the  immeasur- 
able All ;  his  Monsoons  and  periodic  Currents  the 
mysterious  Course  of  Providence  through  ^ons  of 
^ons. 

'  We  speak  of  the  Volume  of  Nature  :  and  truly  a  Vol- 
ume it  is,  — whose  Author  and  Writer  is  God.  To  read 
it !  Dost  thou,  does  man,  so  much  as  well  know  the 
Alphabet  thereof  ?  With  its  Words,  Sentences,  and 
grand  descriptive  Pages,  poetical  and  philosophical, 
spread  out  through  Solar  Systems,  and  Thousands  of 
Years,  we  shall  not  try  thee.  It  is  a  Volume  written  in 
celestial  hieroglyphs,  in  the  true  Sacred-writing  ;  of  which 
even  Prophets  are  happy  that  they  can  read  here  a  line 
and  there  a  line.  As  for  your  Institutes,  and  Acade- 
mies of  Science,  they  strive  bravely;  and,  from  amid 
the  thick-crowded,  inextricably  intertwisted  hieroglyphic 
writing,  pick  out,  by  dextrous  combination,  some  Letters 
in  the  vulgar  Character,  and  therefrom  put  together  this 
and  the  other  economic  Recipe,  of  high  avail  in  Practice. 
That  Nature  is  more  than  some  boundless  Volume  of 
such  Recipes,  or  huge,  well-nigh  inexhaustible  Domestic- 
Cookery  Book,  of  which  the  whole  secret  will  in  this 
manner  one  day  evolve  itself,  the  fewest  dream. 

'  Custom,'  continues  the  Professor,  '  doth  make  dotards 


NATURAL   SUPERNATURALISM.  235 

of  US  all.     Consider  well,  thou  wilt  find  that  Custom  is 
the  greatest  of  Weavers ;  and  weaves  air-raiment  for  all 
the  Spirits  of  the  Universe  :  whereby  indeed  these  dwell 
with  us  visibly,   as  ministering  servants,  in  our  houses 
and  workshops ;    but  their  spiritual  nature  becomes,  to    5 
the  most,  forever  hidden.     Philosophy  complains   that 
Custom  has  hoodwinked  us,  from  the  first ;  that  we  do 
everything  by  Custom,  even  Believe  by  it ;  that  our  very 
Axioms,  let  us  boast  of   Free-thinking  as  we  may,  are 
oftenest   simply  such    Beliefs   as  we   have  never  heard  10 
questioned.     Nay,  what  is  Philosophy  throughout  but  a 
continual  battle  against  Custom  ;  an  ever-renewed  effort 
to  transcejid  the  sphere  of  blind  Custom,  and  so  become  / 
Transcendental .'' 

'Innumerable  are  the  illusions  and  legerdemain-tricks  15 
of  Custom :   but  of  all  these  perhaps  the  cleverest  is  her 
knack  of  persuading  us  that  the  Miraculous,  by  simple 
repetition,  ceases  to  be  Miraculous.     True,  it  is  by  this 
means  we  live ;  for  man  must  work  as  well  as  wonder  : 
and  herein  is  Custom  so  far  a  kind  nurse,  guiding  him  20 
to  his  true  benefit.     But  she  is  a  fond  foolish  nurse,  or 
rather  we  are  false  foolish  nurslings,  when,  in  our  resting 
and  reflecting  hours,  we  prolong  the  same  deception. 
Am  I  to  view  the  Stupendous  with  stupid  indifference, 
because  I  have  seen  it  twice,  or  two-hundred,  or  two-  25 
million  times  ?     There  is  no  reason  in  Nature  or  in  Art 
why    I    should :    unless,  indeed,    I   am    a   mere   Work- 
Machine,   for  whom   the   divine   gift  of  Thought  were 
no  other  than   the   terrestrial   gift  of   Steam   is  to   the 
Steam-engine  ;  a  power  whereby  cotton  might  be  spun,  30 
and  money  and  money's  worth  realised. 

'  Notable  enough  too,  here  as  elsewhere,  wilt  thou  find 
the  potency  of  Najries  ;  which  indeed  are  but  one  kind 
of  such  custom- woven,  wonder-hiding:  Garments.    Witch- 


236 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


craft,  and  all  manner  of  Spectre-work,  and  Demonology, 
we  have  now  named  Madness,  and  Diseases  of  the 
Nerves.  Seldom  reflecting  that  still  the  new  question 
comes  upon  us :  What  is  Madness,  what  are  Nerves  ? 
Ever,  as  before,  does  Madness  remain  a  mysterious- 
terrific,  altogether  i?iferiial  boiling-up  of  the  Nether 
Chaotic  Deep,  through  this  fair-painted  Vision  of  Crea- 
tion, which  swims  thereon,  which  we  name  the  Real. 
Was  Luther's  Picture  of  the  Devil  less  a  Reality, 
whether  it  were  formed  within  the  bodily  eye,  or  without 
it }  In  every  the  wisest  Soul  lies  a  whole  world  of 
internal  Madness,  an  authentic  Demon-Empire  ;  out  of 
which,  indeed,  his  world  of  Wisdom  has  been  creatively 
built  together,  and  now  rests  there,  as  on  its  dark  foun- 
dations does  a  habitable  flowery  Earth-rind. 

'  But  deepest  of  all  illusory  Appearances,  for  hiding 
Wonder,  as  for  many  other  ends,  are  your  two  grand 
fundamental  world-enveloping  Appearances,  Space  and 
Time.  These,  as  spun  and  woven  for  us  from  before 
Birth  itself,  to  clothe  our  celestial  Me  for  dwelling 
here,  and  yet  to  blind  it,  —  lie  all-embracing,  as  the 
universal  canvas,  or  warp  and  woof,  whereby  all  minor 
Illusions,  in  this  Phantasm  Existence,  weave  and  paint 
themselves.  In  vain,  while  here  on  Earth,  shall  you  en- 
deavour to  strip  them  off;  you  can,  at  best,  but  rend 
them  asunder  for  moments,  and  look  through. 

*  Fortunatus  had  a  wishing  Hat,  which  when  he  put 
on,  and  wished  himself  Anywhere,  behold  he  was  There. 
By  this  means  had  Fortunatus  triumphed  over  Space, 
he  had  annihilated  Space ;  for  him  there  was  no  Where, 
but  all  was  Here.  Were  a  Hatter  to  establish  himself, 
in  the  Wahngasse  of  Weissnichtwo,  and  make  felts  of 
this  sort  for  all  mankind,  what  a  world  we  should  have 
of  it !    Still  stranger,  should,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 


NATURAL   SUPERNATURALISM.  237 

Street,  another  Hatter  establish  himself ;  and,  as  his 
fellow-craftsman  made  Space-annihilating  Hats,  make 
Time-annihilating !  Of  both  would  I  purchase,  were  it 
with  my  last  groschen  ;  but  chiefly  of  this  latter.  To 
clap-on  your  felt,  and,  simply  by  wishing  that  you  were  5 
Any7uhe?'e,  straightway  to  be  There!  Next  to  clap-on 
your  other  felt,  and  simply  by  wishing  that  you  were 
Anywhen,  and  straightway  to  be  Then  !  This  were  in- 
deed the  grander  :  shooting  at  will  from  the  Fire-Crea- 
tion of  the  World  to  its  Fire-Consummation ;  here  his-  10 
torically  present  in  the  First  Century,  conversing  face  to 
face  with  Paul  and  Seneca ;  there  prophetically  in  the 
Thirty-first,  conversing  also  face  to  face  with  other 
Pauls  and  Senecas,  who  as  yet  stand  hidden  in  the 
depth  of  that  late  Time  !  15 

*  Or  thinkest  thou,  it  were  impossible,  unimaginable  ? 
Is  the  Past  annihilated,  then,  or  only  past ;  is  the  Future 
non-extant  or  only  future  ?  Those  mystic  faculties  of 
thine.  Memory  and  Hope,  already  answer:  already 
through  those  mystic  avenues,  thou  the  Earth-blinded  20 
summonest  both  Past  and  Future,  and  communest  with 
them,  though  as  yet  darkly,  and  with  mute  beckonings. 
The  curtains  of  Yesterday  drop  down,  the  curtains  of 
Tomorrow  roll  up  ;  but  Yesterday  and  Tomorrow  both 
are.  Pierce  through  the  Time-Element,  glance  into  the  25 
Eternal.  Believe  what  thou  findest  written  in  the 
sanctuaries  of  Man's  Soul,  even  as  all  Thinkers,  in  all 
ages,  have  devoutly  read  it  there :  that  Time  and  Space 
are  not  God,  but  creations  of  God ;  that  with  God  as  it 
is  a  universal  Here,  so  it  is  an  everlasting  Now.  30 

'And  seest  thou  therein  any  glimpse  of  Immortality? 
—  O  Heaven  !  Is  the  white  Tomb  of  our  Loved  One, 
who  died  from  our  arms,  and  had  to  be  left  behind  us 
there,  which  rises  in  the  distance,  like  a  pale,  mourn- 


238 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


fully  receding  Milestone,  to  tell  how  many  toilsome  un- 
cheered  miles  we  have  journeyed  on  alone,  —  but  a  pale 
spectral  Illusion  !  Is  the  lost  Friend  still  mysteriously 
Here,  even  as  w^e  are  Here  mysteriously,  with  God  !  — 
Know  of  a  truth  that  only  the  Time-shadows  have 
perished,  or  are  perishable  ;  that  the  real  Being  of  what- 
ever was,  and  whatever  is,  and  whatever  will  be,  is  even 
now  and  forever.  This,  should  it  unhappily  seem  new, 
thou  mayst  ponder  at  thy  leisure  ;  for  the  next  twenty 
years,  or  the  next  twenty  centuries :  believe  it  thou 
must ;  understand  it  thou  canst  not. 

'  That  the  Thought-forms,  Space  and  Time,  wherein, 
once  for  all,  we  are  sent  into  this  Earth  to  live,  should 
condition  and  determine  our  whole  Practical  reasonings, 
conceptions,  and  imagings  or  imaginings,  —  seems  alto- 
gether fit,  just,  and  unavoidable.  But  that  they  should, 
furthermore,  usurp  such  sway  over  pure  spiritual  Medi- 
tation, and  blind  us  to  the  wonder  everywhere  lying 
close  on  us,  seems  nowise  so.  Admit  Space  and  Time 
to  their  due  rank  as  Forms  of  Thought;  nay,  even,  if 
thou  wilt,  to  their  quite  undue  rank  of  Realities :  and 
consider,  then,  with  thyself  how  their  thin  disguises 
hide  from  us  the  brightest  God-effulgences !  Thus, 
w^ere  it  not  miraculous,  could  I  stretch  forth  my  hand, 
and  clutch  the  Sun  ?  Yet  thou  seest  me  daily  stretch 
forth  my  hand  and  therewith  clutch  many  a  thing,  and 
sw^ing  it  hither  and  thither.  Art  thou  a  grown  baby, 
then,  to  fancy  that  the  Miracle  lies  in  miles  of  distance, 
or  in  pounds  avoirdupois  of  weight ;  and  not  to  see  that 
the  true  inexplicable  God-revealing  Miracle  lies  in  this, 
that  I  can  stretch  forth  my  hand  at  all ;  that  I  have  free 
Force  to  clutch  aught  therewith  ?  Innumerable  other  of 
this  sort  are  the  deceptions,  and  wonder-hiding  stupe- 
factions, which  Space  practises  on  us. 


NATURAL   SUPERNATURALISM.  239 

'  Still  worse  is  it  with  regard  to  Time.  Your  grand 
anti-magician,  and  universal  wonder-hider,  is  this  same 
lying  Time.  Had  we  but  the  Time-annihilating  Hat, 
to  put  on  for  once  only,  we  should  see  ourselves  in  a 
World  of  Miracles,  wherein  all  fabled  or  authentic  5 
Thaumaturgy,  and  feats  of  Magic,  were  outdone.  But 
unhappily  we  have  not  such  a  Hat ;  and  man,  poor  fool 
that  he  is,  can  seldom  and  scantily  help  himself  without 
one. 

'  Were  it  not  wonderful,  for  instance,  had  Orpheus,  or  10 
Amphion,  built  the  walls  of  Thebes  by  the  mere  sound 
of  his  Lyre  ?     Yet   tell   me.  Who   built  these  walls  of 
Weissnichtwo ;  summoning  out  all  the  sandstone  rocks, 
to  dance  along  from  the  Steinbruch  (now  a  huge  Trog- 
lodyte   Chasm,    with    frightful    green-mantled     pools);  15 
and    shape    themselves    into    Doric    and    Ionic    pillars, 
squared  ashlar  houses,  and  noble  streets  ?     Was  it  not 
the  still   higher  Orpheus,  or   Orpheuses,   who,    in   past 
centuries,  by  the  divine  Music  of  Wisdom,  succeeded  in 
civilising  man  t     Our  highest  Orpheus  walked  in  Judea,  20 
eighteen  hundred  years  ago :  his  sphere-melody,  flowing 
in  wild  native  tones,  took  captive  the  ravished  souls  of 
men ;   and,  being  of  a  truth   sphere-melody,  still  flows 
and  sounds,  though  now  with  thousandfold  accompani- 
ments,  and   rich  symphonies,    through   all   our  hearts;  25 
and   modulates,    and   divinely  leads   them.       Is   that   a 
wonder,  which  happens  in  two  hours ;  and  does  it  cease 
to  be   wonderful   if   happening  in   two    million  ?       Not 
only  was  Thebes  built  by  the  music  of  an  Orpheus ;  but 
without  the  music  of  some  inspired  Orpheus  was  no  city  30 
ever  built,  no  work  that  man  glories  in  ever  done. 

'  Sweep  away  the  Illusion  of  Time ;  glance,  if  thou 
have  eyes,  from  the  near  moving-cause  to  its  far-distant 
Mover :    The    stroke   that   came   transmitted  through  a 


240  SAKTOK   RESARTUS. 

'  whole  galaxy  of  elastic  balls,  was  it  less  a  stroke  than  if 
'  the  last  ball  only  had  been  struck,  and  sent  flying  ? 
'  O,  could  I  (with  the  Time-annihilating  Hat)  transport 
'  thee  direct  from  the  Beginnings  to  the  Endings,  how 
5  '  were  thy  eyesight  unsealed,  and  thy  heart  set  flaming  in 
'  the  Light-sea  of  celestial  wonder  !  Then  sawest  thou 
'  that  this  fair  Universe,  were  it  in  the  meanest  province 
'  thereof,  is  in  very  deed  the  star-domed  City  of  God  ; 
'  that  through  every  star,  through  every  grass-blade,  and 

10  '  most  through  every  Living  Soul,  the  glory  of  a  present 
'  God  still  beams.  But  Nature,  which  is  the  Time-vest- 
'  ure  of  God,  and  reveals  Him  to  the  wise,  hides  Him 
'  from  the  foolish. 

'  Again,  could  anything  be  more  miraculous  than  an 

15  'actual  authentic  Ghost?  The  English  Johnson  longed, 
'  all  his  life,  to  see  one  ;  but  could  not,  though  he  went  to 
'  Cock  Lane,  and  thence  to  the  church-vaults,  and  tapped 
'  on  coffins.  Foolish  Doctor  !  Did  he  never,  with  the 
'  mind's  eye  as  well  as  with  the  body's,  look  round  him 

20  '  into  that  full  tide  of  human  Life  he  so  loved  ;  did  he 
'  never  so  much  as  look  into  Himself  ?  The  good  Doc- 
'  tor  was  a  Ghost,  as  actual  and  authentic  as  heart  could 
'  wish  ;  well-nigh  a  million  of  Ghosts  were  travelling  the 
/  streets  by  his  side.     Once  more  I  say,  sweep  away  the 

25  '  illusion  of    Time ;    compress  the  threescore  years  into 

*  three  minutes  :   what  else  was  he,  what  else  are   we  ? 

.  *  Are  we  not  Spirits,  that  are  shaped  into  a  body,  into  an 

^  I  '  Appearance  ;  and  that  fade  away  again  into  air  and 
'  Invisibility  ?     This  is  no  metaphor,  it  is  a  simple,  scien- 

30  '  tific  fact :  we  start  aut  of  Nothingness,  take  figure,  and 
'  are  Apparitions ;  round  us,  as  round  the  veriest  spectre, 
'  is  Eternity ;  and  to  Eternity  minutes  are  as  years  and 
'  aeons.  Come  there  not  tones  of  Love  and  Faith,  as  from 
'  celestial  harp-strings,  like  the  Song  of  beatified  Souls  ? 


NATURAL   SUPEKNATURALISM.  241 

'  And  again,  do  not  we  squeak  and  gibber  (in  our  dis- 
'cordant,  screech-owlish  debatings  and  recriminatings) ; 
'  and  ghde  bodeful  and  feeble,   and  fearful ;    or  uproar 

*  (^poltcr?i),  and  revel  in  our  mad  Dance  of  the  Dead,  — 

'  till  the  scent  of  the  morning-air  summons  us  to  our  still  5 
'  Home  ;   and  dreamy  Night  becomes  awake  and  Day  ? 
'  Where  now  is  Alexander  of  Macedon  :  does  the  steel 
'  Host,  that  yelled  in  fierce  battle-shouts    at  Issus  and 
'  Arbela,  remain  behind  him ;  or  have  they  all  vanished 

*  utterly,  even  as  perturbed  Goblins  must  ?     Napoleon  too,  10 
'  and  his  Moscow  Retreats  and  Austerlitz  Campaigns  ! 

'  Was  it  all  other  than  the  veriest  Spectre-hunt ;  which 
'  has  now,  with  its  howling  tumult  that  made  night  hideous, 
'  flitted  away  ?  —  Ghosts  !  There  are  nigh  a  thousand- 
'  million  walking  the  Earth  openly  at  noontide  ;  some  half-  15 
'  hundred  have  vanished  from  it,  some  half-hundred  have 
'  arisen  in  it,  ere  thy  watch  ticks  once. 

'  O  Heaven,  it  is  mysterious,  it  is  awful  to  consider 

*  that  we  not  only  carry  each  a  future  Ghost  within  him ; 

'  but  are,  in  very  deed,  Ghosts  !     These  Limbs,  whence  20 
'  had  we  them  ;  this  stormy  Force  ;  this  life-blood  with  its 
'  burning    Passion  ?       They   are    dust    and    shadow ;    a 
'  Shadow-system  gathered  round  our  Me  ;  wherein  through 
'  some  moments  or  years,  the  Divine  Essence  is  to  be  re- 
'  vealed  in  the  Flesh.     That  warrior  on  his  strong  war-  25 
'  horse,  fire  flashes  through  his  eyes  ;  force  dwells  in  his 
'  arm  and  heart ;  but  warrior  and  war-horse  are  a  vision  ; 
'  a  revealed  Force,  nothing  more.     Stately  they  tread  the 
'  Earth,  as  if  it  were  a  firm  substance  :  fool  !  the  Earth  is 
'  but  a  film  ;  it  cracks  in  twain,  and  warrior  and  war-horse  30 
'  sink  beyond  plummet's  sounding.     Plummet's  .'*     Fantasy 
'  herself  will  not  follow  them.     A  little  while  ago  they  were 
'  not ;  a  little  while,  and  they  are  not,  their  very  ashes 
'  are  not. 


2  42 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


'  So  it  has  been  from  the  beginning,  so  will  it  be  to  the 
end.  Generation  after  generation  takes  to  itself  the 
Form  of  a  Body ;  and  forth-issuing  from  Cimmerian 
Night,  on  Heaven's  mission  appears.  What  Force  and 
Fire  is  in  each  he  expends  :  one  grinding  in  the  mill  of 
Industry;  one  hunter-like  climbing  the  giddy  Alpine 
heights  of  Science ;  one  madly  dashed  in  pieces  on  the 
rocks  of  Strife,  in  war  with  his  fellow:  —  and  then  the 
Heaven-sent  is  recalled ;  his  earthly  Vesture  falls  away, 
and  soon  even  to  Sense  becomes  a  vanished  Shadow. 
Thus,  like  some  wild-flaming,  wild-thundering  train  of 
Heaven's  Artillery,  does  this  mysterious  Mankind 
thunder  and  flame,  in  long-drawn,  quick-succeeding 
grandeur,  through   the   unknown    Deep.     Thus,  like    a 

15  God-created,  fire-breathing  Spirit-host,  we  emerge  from 
the  Inane ;  haste  stormfully  across  the  astonished  Earth  ; 
then  plunge  again  into  the  Inane.  Earth's  mountains 
are  levelled,  and  her  seas  filled  up,  in  our  passage  :  can 
the  Earth,  which  is  but  dead  and  a  vision,  resist  Spirits 
which  have  reality  and  are  alive  ?  On  the  hardest 
adamant  some  foot-print  of  us  is  stamped-in ;  the  last 
Rear  of  the  host  will  read  traces  of  the  earliest  Van. 
But  whence  ?  —  O  Heaven,  whither  ?  Sense  knows  not ; 
Faith   knows   not ;  only  that  it   is  through   Mystery  to 

25  '  Mystery,  from  God  and  to  God. 

"  We  are  such  stuff 
'  As  Dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  Life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep  !  "  ' 


CIRCUMSPECTIVE.  243 

CHAPTER    IX. 

CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 

Here,  then,  arises  the  so  momentous  question  :   Have 
many  British  Readers  actually  arrived  with  us  at  the  new 
promised  country ;  is  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes  now  at 
last  opening  around  them  ?     Long  and  adventurous  has 
the  journey  been :   from  those  outmost  vulgar,  palpable    5 
Woollen   Hulls   of   Man  ;    through  his  wondrous  Flesh- 
Garments,  and  his  wondrous  Social  Garnitures ;  inwards 
to  the  Garments  of  his  very  Soul's  Soul,  to  Time  and      i 
Space  themselves  !     And  now  does  the  spiritual,  eternal 
Essence  of  Man,  and  of  Mankind,  bared  of  such  wrap-  10 
pages,  begin  in  any  measure  to  reveal  itself  ?     Can  many 
readers  discern,  as  through  a  glass  darkly,  in  huge  waver- 
ing outlines,  some  primeval  rudiments  of  Man's  Being, 
what  is  changeable  divided  from  what  is  unchangeable  1 
Does  that  Earth-Spirit's  speech  in  Faust  ^  —  15 

'Tis  thus  at  the  roaring  Loom  of  Time  I  ply, 
'  And  weave  for  God  the  Garment  thou  see'st  Him  by  ; ' 

or  that  other  thousand-times  repeated  speech  of  the 
Magician,  Shakspeare,  — 

'  And  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  this  vision,  ^° 

*  The  cloudcapt  Towers,  the  gorgeous  Palaces, 
'  The  solemn  Temples,  the  great  Globe  itself, 

*  And  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve  ; 

'  And  like  this  unsubstantial  pageant  faded, 

'  Leave  not  a  wrack  behind  ; '  25 

begin  to  have  some  meaning  for  us  ?  In  a  word,  do  we 
at  length  stand  safe  in  the  far  region  of  Poetic  Creation 
and  Palingenesia,  where  that  Phoenix  Death-Birth  of 
Human  Society,  and  of  all  Human  Things,  appears  possi- 
ble, is  seen  to  be  inevitable  ?  3° 


2  44  SARTOR   RESARTCJS. 

Along  this  most  insufficient,  unheard-of  Bridge,  which 
the  Editor,  by  Heaven's  blessing,  has  now  seen  himself 
enabled  to  conclude  if  not  complete,  it  cannot  be  his 
sober  calculation,  but  only  his  fond  hope,  that  many  have 
c  travelled  without  accident.  No  firm  arch,  overspanning 
the  Impassable  with  paved  highway,  could  the  Editor  con- 
struct ;  only,  as  was  said,  some  zigzag  series  of  rafts  float- 
ing tumultuously  thereon.  Alas,  and  the  leaps  from  raft 
to  raft  were  too  often  of  a  breakneck  character ;  the  dark- 

10  ness,  the  nature  of  the  element,  all  was  against  us  ! 

Nevertheless,  may  not  here  and  there  one  of  a  thousand, 
provided  with  a  discursiveness  of  intellect  rare  in  our  day, 
have  cleared  the  passage,  in  spite  of  all  ?  Happy  few  ! 
little  band  of  Friends  !  be  welcome,  be  of  courage.     By 

15  degrees,  the  eye  grows  accustomed  to  its  new  Where- 
about ;  the  hand  can  stretch  itself  forth  to  work  there  :  it 
is  in  this  grand  and  indeed  highest  work  of  Palingenesia 
that  ye  shall  labour,  each  according  to  ability.  New 
labourers  will   arrive ;  new  Bridges  will    be   built ;  nay, 

20  may  not  our  own  poor  rope-and-raft  Bridge,  in  your  pass- 
ings and  repassings,  be  mended  in  many  a  point,  till  it 
grow  quite  firm,  passable  even  for  the  halt  ? 

Meanwhile,  of  the  innumerable  multitude  that  started 
with  us,  joyous  and  full  of  hope,  where  now  is  the  in- 

25  numerable  remainder,  whom  we  see  no  longer  by  our  side  "i 
The  most  have  recoiled,  and  stand  gazing  afar  off,  in 
unsympathetic  astonishment,  at  our  career :  not  a  few, 
pressing  forward  with  more  courage,  have  missed  footing, 
or  leaped  short ;  and  now  swim  weltering  in  the  Chaos- 

30  flood,  some  towards  this  shore,  some  towards  that.  To 
these  also  a  helping-hand  should  be  held  out;  at  least 
some  word  of  encouragement  be  said. 

Or,  to  speak  without  metaphor,  with  which  mode  of 
utterance  Teuf elsdrockh  unhappily  has  somewhat  infected 


CIRCUMSPECTIVE.  245 

US,  —  can  it  be  hidden  from  the  Editor  that  many  a  Brit- 
ish Reader  sits  reading  quite  bewildered  in  head,  and 
afflicted  rather  than  instructed  by  the  present  Work  ? 
Yes,  long  ago  has  many  a  British  Reader  been,  as  now, 
demanding,  with  something  like  a  snarl  :  Whereto  does  5 
all  this  lead  ;  or  what  use  is  in  it  ? 

In  the  way  of  replenishing  thy  purse,  or  otherwise  aid- 
ing thy  digestive  faculty,  O  British  Reader,  it  leads  to 
nothing,  and  there  is  no  use  in  it ;  but  rather  the  reverse, 
for  it  costs  thee  somewhat.     Nevertheless,  if  through  this  10 
unpromising  Horn-gate,  Teufelsdrockh,  and  we  by  means 
of  him,  have  led  thee  into  the  true  Land  of  Dreams  ;  and 
through  the  Clothes-Screen,  as  through  a  magical  Pierre- 
Fertuis,  thou  lookest,  even  for  moments,  into  the  region 
of  the  Wonderful,  and  seest  and  feelest  that  thy  daily  life  15 
is  girt  with  Wonder,  and  based  on  Wonder,  and  thy  very 
blankets    and   breeches   are    Miracles,  —  then    art   thou 
profited  beyond  money's  worth  ;  and  hast  a  thankfulness 
towards  our  Professor  ;  nay,  perhaps  in  many  a  literary 
Tea-circle   wilt  open  thy  kind  lips,  and  audibly  express  20 
that  same. 

Nay,  farther,  art  not  thou  too  perhaps  by  this  time 
made  aware  that  all  Symbols  are  properly  Clothes  ;  that 
all  Forms  whereby  Spirit  manifests  itself  to  sense, 
whether  outwardly  or  in  the  imagination,  are  Clothes  ;  25 
and  thus  not  only  the  parchment  Magna  Charta,  which  a 
Tailor  was  nigh  cutting  into  measures,  but  the  Pomp  and 
Authority  of  Law,  the  sacredness  of  Majesty,  and  all 
inferior  Worships  (Worthships)  are  properly  a  Vesture 
and  Raiment ;  and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  themselves  30 
are  articles  of  wearing-apparel  (for  the  Religious  Idea)  ? 
In  which  case,  must  it  not  also  be  admitted  that  this 
Science  of  Clothes  is  a  high  one,  and  may  with  infinitely 
deeper  study  on  thy  part  yield  richer  fruit  :  that  it  takes 


246  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

scientific  rank  beside  Codification,  and  Political  Economy, 
and  the  theory  of  the  British  Constitution  ;  nay,  rather, 
from  its  prophetic  height  looks  down  on  all  these,  as  on 
so  many  weaving-shops  and  spinning-mills,  where  the 
5  Vestures  which  //  has  to  fashion,  and  consecrate,  and 
distribute,  are,  too  often  by  haggard  hungry  operatives 
who  see  no  farther  than  their  nose,  mechanically  woven 
and  spun  ? 

But  omitting  all   this,   much  more  all  that  concerns 

10  Natural  Supernaturalism,  and  indeed  whatever  has  refer- 
ence to  the  Ulterior  or  Transcendental  Portion  of  the 
Science,  or  bears  never  so  remotely  on  that  promised 
Volume  of  the  Palingenesie  der  77ienschlichen  Gesellschaft 
(Newbirth   of    Society),  —  we   humbly   suggest   that   no 

15  province  of  Clothes-Philosophy,  even  the  lowest,  is  with- 
out its  direct  value,  but  that  innumerable  inferences  of  a 
practical  nature  may  be  drawn  therefrom.  To  say  noth- 
ing of  those  pregnant  considerations,  ethical,  political, 
symbolical,  which  crowd  on  the  Clothes-Philosopher  from 

20  the  very  threshold  of  his  Science  ;  nothing  even  of  those 
'  architectural  ideas '  which,  as  we  have  seen,  lurk  at  the 
bottom  of  all  Modes,  and  will  one  day,  better  unfolding 
themselves,  lead  to  important  revolutions,  —  let  us  glance 
for   a   moment,   and   with  the  faintest  light  of   Clothes- 

25  Philosophy,  on  what  may  be  called  the  Habilatory  Class 
of  our  fellow-men.  Here  too  overlooking,  where  so  much 
were  to  be  looked  on,  the  million  spinners,  weavers, 
fullers,  dyers,  washers,  and  wringers,  that  puddle  and 
muddle  in  their  dark  recesses,  to  make  us  Clothes,  and 

30  die  that  we  may  live,  —  let  us  but  turn  the  reader's  atten- 
tion upon  two  small  divisions  of  mankind,  who,  like 
moths,  may  be  regarded  as  Cloth-animals,  creatures  that 
live,  move  and  have  their  being  in  Cloth :  we  mean, 
Dandies  and  Tailors. 


^ 


THE   DANDIACAL    BODY. 


247 


In  regard  to  both  which  small  divisions  it  may  be  as- 
serted, without  scruple,  that  the  public  feeling,  unen- 
lightened by  Philosophy,  is  at  fault ;  and  even  that  the 
dictates  of  humanity  are  violated.  As  will  perhaps  abun- 
dantly appear  to  readers  of  the  two  following  Chapters. 


CHAPTER   X. 


THE    DANDIACAL    BODY. 


First,  touching  Dandies,  let  us  consider,  with  some 
scientific  strictness,  what  a  Dandy  specially  is.  A  Dandy 
is  a  Clothes-wearing  man,  a  Man  whose  trade,  office  and 
existence  consists  in  the  wearing  of  Clothes.  Every 
faculty  of  his  soul,  spirit,  purse  and  person  is  heroically  10 
consecrated  to  this  one  object,  the  wearing  of  Clothes 
wisely  and  well :  so  that  as  others  dress  to  live,  he  lives 
to  dress.  The  all-importance  of  Clothes,  which  a  German 
Professor,  of  unequalled  learning  and  acumen,  writes  his 
enormous  Volume  to  demonstrate,  has  sprung  up  in  the  15 
intellect  of  the  Dandy,  without  effort,  like  an  instinct  of 
genius  ;  he  is  inspired  with  Cloth,  a  Poet  of  Cloth.  What 
Teufelsdrockh  would  call  a  '  Divine  Idea  of  Cloth '  is 
born  with  him ;  and  this,  like  other  such  Ideas,  will  ex- 
press itself  outwardly,  or  wring  his  heart  asunder  with  20 
unutterable  throes. 

But,  like  a  generous,  creative  enthusiast,  he  fearlessly 
makes    his    Idea  an   Action  ;    shews  himself  in  peculiar        . 
guise    to   mankind  ;    walks  forth,    a  witness   and   living      N 
Martyr  to  the  eternal  Worth  of  Clothes.     We  call  him  a  25 
Poet :  is  not  his  body  the  (stuffed)  parchment-skin  where- 
on he  writes,  with  cunning  Huddersfield  dyes,  a  Sonnet 


248  S.-IA'/OA'    A'/wSAA'/US. 

to  his  mistress'  eyebrow  ?  Say,  rather,  an  Epos,  and 
ClotJia  Viriunque  cano,  to  the  whole  world,  in  Macaronic 
verses,  which  he  that  runs  may  read.  Nay,  if  you  grant, 
what  seems  to  be  admissible,  that  the  Dandy  has  a  Think- 
5  ing-principle  in  him,  and  some  notions  of  Time  and 
Space,  is  there  not  in  this  Life-devotedness  to  Cloth,  in 
this  so  willing  sacrifice  of  the  Immortal  to  the  Perishable, 
something  (though  in  reverse  order)  of  that  blending  and 
identification  of   Eternity  with  Time,  which  as  we  have 

10  seen,  constitutes  the  Prophetic  character  ? 

And  now,  for  all  this  perennial  Martyrdom,  and  Poesy, 
and  even  Prophecy,  what  is  it  that  the  Dandy  asks  in 
return  ?  Solely,  we  may  say,  that  you  would  recognise 
his  existence  ;  would  admit  him  to  be  a  living  object  ;  or 

15  even  failing  this,  a  visual  object,  or  thing  that  will  reflect 
rays  of  light.  Your  silver  or  your  gold  (beyond  what  the 
niggardly  Law  has  already  secured  him)  he  solicits  not ; 
simply  the  glance  of  your  eyes.  Understand  his  mystic 
significance,  or  altogether  miss  and  misinterpret  it ;   do 

20  but  look  at  him,  and  he  is  contented.  May  we  not  well 
cry  shame  on  an  ungrateful  world,  which  refuses  even 
this  poor  boon  ;  which  will  waste  its  optic  faculty  on 
dried  Crocodiles,  and  Siamese  Twins  ;  and  over  the 
domestic  wonderful  wonder  of  wonders,  a  live  Dandy, 

25  glance  with  hasty  indifference,  and  a  scarcely  concealed 
contempt  !  Him  no  Zoologist  classes  among  the  Mam- 
malia, no  Anatomist  dissects  with  care  :  when  did  we  see 
any  injected  Preparation  of  the  Dandy  in  our  Museums  ; 
any  specimen  of  him  preserved  in  spirits  ?     Lord  Her- 

30  ringbone  may  dress  himself  in  a  snuff-brown  suit,  with 
snuff-brown  shirt  and  shoes :  it  skills  not  ;  the  undis- 
cerning  public,  occupied  with  grosser  wants,  passes  by 
regardless  on  the  other  side. 

The  age  of  Curiosity,  like  that  of  Chivalry,  is  indeed, 


7^11  E   DANDIACAL    BODY. 


249 


properly  speaking,  gone.  Yet  perhaps  only  gone  to 
sleep :  for  here  arises  the  Clothes-Philosophy  to  resusci- 
tate, strangely  enough,  both  the  one  and  the  other  ! 
Should  sound  views  of  this  Science  come  to  prevail,  the 
essential  nature  of  the  British  Dandy,  and  the  mystic  5 
significance  that  lies  in  him,  cannot  always  remain  hidden 
under  laughable  and  lamentable  hallucination.  The  fol- 
lowing long  Extract  from  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  may 
set  the  matter,  if  not  in  its  true  light,  yet  in  the  way 
towards  such.  It  is  to  be  regretted,  however,  that  here,  10 
as  so  often  elsewhere,  the  Professor's  keen  philosophic 
perspicacity  is  somewhat  marred  by  a  certain  mixture  of 
almost  owlish  purblindness,  or  else  of  some  perverse,  in- 
effectual, ironic  tendency  ;  our  readers  shall  judge  which  : 

'In  these  distracted  times,'  writes  he,  'when  the  Reli-  15 
gious  Principle,  driven  out  of  most  Churches,  either  lies 
unseen  in  the  hearts  of  good  men,  looking  and  longing 
and  silently  working  there  towards  some  new  Revela- 
tion ;   or  else  wanders  homeless  over  the  world,  like  a 
disembodied  soul  seeking  its  terrestrial  organisation,  —  20 
into    how    many    strange    shapes,   of    Superstition    and 
Fanaticism,   does   it   not   tentatively   and   errantly  cast 
itself  !     The  higher  Enthusiasm  of  man's  nature  is  for 
the  while  without  Exponent  ;    yet  does  it  continue  inde- 
structible, unweariedly  active,  and  work  blindly  in  the  25 
great  chaotic  deep :    thus   Sect  after  Sect,  and  Church 
after  Church,  bodies  itself  forth,  and  melts  again  into 
new  metamorphosis. 

'  Chiefly  is  this  observable  in  England,  which,  as  the 
wealthiest   and  worst-instructed    of    European   nations,  30 
offers  precisely  the  elements  (of  Heat,  namely,  and  of 
Darkness),  in  which  such  moon-calves  and  monstrosities 
are  best  generated.     Among  the   newer   Sects   of  that 


250 


6V/  A'  TOR   RES  A  R  TUS. 


country,  one  of  the  most  notable,  and  closely  connected 
with  our  present  subject,  is  that  of  the  Dandies ;  con- 
cerning which,  what  little  information  I  have  been  able 
to  procure  may  fitly  stand  here. 

'  It  is  true,  certain  of  the  English  Journalists,  men  gen- 
erally without  sense  for  the  Religious  Principle,  or  judg- 
ment for  its  manifestations,  speak,  in  their  brief  enigmatic 
notices,  as  if  this  were  perhaps  rather  a  Secular  Sect, 
and  not  a  Religious  one  ;  nevertheless,  to  the  psycho- 
logic eye  its  devotional  and  even  sacrificial  character 
plainly  enough  reveals  itself.  Whether  it  belongs  to  the 
class  of  Fetish-worships,  or  of  Hero-worships  or  Poly- 
theisms, or  to  what  other  class,  may  in  the  present  state 
of  our  intelligence  remain  undecided  {schwebe^i).  A 
certain  touch  of  Manicheism,  not  indeed  in  the  Gnostic 
shape,  is  discernible  enough :  also  (for  human  Error 
walks  in  a  cycle,  and  reappears  at  intervals)  a  not-in- 
considerable resemblance  to  that  Superstition  of  the 
Athos  Monks,  who  by  fasting  from  all  nourishment,  and 
looking  intensely  for  a  length  of  time  into  their  own 
navels,  came  to  discern  therein  the  true  Apocalypse  of 
Nature,  and  Heaven  Unveiled.  To  my  own  surmise,  it 
appears  as  if  this  Dandiacal  Sect  were  but  a  new  modi- 
fication, adapted  to  the  new  time,  of  that  primeval  Super- 
stition, Self -wof's /lip;  which  Zerdusht,  Quangfoutchee, 
Mohamed,  and  others,  strove  rather  to  subordinate  and 
restrain  than  to  eradicate ;  and  which  only  in  the  purer 
forms  of  Religion  has  been  altogether  rejected.  Where- 
fore, if  any  one  chooses  to  name  it  revived  Ahrimanism, 
or  a  new  figure  of  Demon- Worship,  I  have,  so  far  as  is 
yet  visible,  no  objection. 

'  For  the  rest,  these  people,  animated  with  the  zeal  of 
a  new  Sect,  display  courage  and  perseverance,  and  what 
force  there  is  in  man's  nature,  though  never  so  enslaved. 


THE   DANDIACAL    BODY. 


251 


They  affect  great  purity  and  separatism ;  distinguish 
themselves  by  a  particular  costume  (whereof  some 
notices  were  given  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  Volume); 
likewise,  so  far  as  possible,  by  a  particular  speech  (ap- 
parently some  broken  Lhigua-franca,  or  English-French) ;  5 
and,  on  the  whole,  strive  to  maintain  a  true  Nazarene 
deportment,  and  keep  themselves  unspotted  from  the 
world. 

'  They  have  their  Temples,  whereof  the  chief,  as  the 
Jewish  Temple  did,  stands  in  their  metropolis  ;  and  is  10 
named  Almack's,  a  word  of  uncertain  etymology.  They 
worship  principally  by  night ;  and  have  their  Highpriests 
and  Highpriestesses,  who,  however,  do  not  continue  for 
life.  The  rites,  by  some  supposed  to  be  of  the  INIenadic 
sort,  or  perhaps  with  an  Eleusinian  or  Cabiric  character,  15 
are  held  strictly  secret.  Nor  are  Sacred  Books  wanting 
to  the  Sect ;  these  they  call  Fashionable  Novels :  how- 
ever, the  Canon  is  not  completed,  and  some  are  canon- 
ical and  others  not. 

'  Of  such  Sacred  Books  I,  not  without  expense,  procured  20 
myself  some  samples ;  and  in  hope  of  true  insight,  and 
with  the  zeal  which  beseems  an   Inquirer  into  Clothes, 
set  to  interpret  and  study  them.     But  wholly  to  no  pur- 
pose :    that  tough  faculty  of  reading,  for  which  the  world 
will   not  refuse  me  credit,  was  here  for  the  first  time  25 
foiled  and  set  at  naught.     In  vain  that  I  summoned  my 
whole  energies   (mie/i  weidlich  anstreJigte),  and  did  my 
very  utmost ;  at  the  end  of  some  short  space,  I  was  uni- 
formly seized  with  not  so  much  what  I  can  call  a  drum- 
ming in   my  ears,  as   a   kind  of  infinite,  unsufferable,  30 
Jews-harping  and   scrannel-piping  there  ;  to  which  the 
frightfullest  species  of  Magnetic  Sleep  soon  supervened. 
And  if  I  strove  to  shake  this  away,  and  absolutely  would 
not  yield,  came  a  hitherto  unfelt  sensation,  as  of  Deliri- 


252  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

urn  Tremens^  and  a  melting  into  total  deliquium  :  till  at 
last,  by  order  of  the  Doctor,  dreading  ruin  to  my  whole 
intellectual  and  bodily  faculties,  and  a  general  breaking- 
up  of  the  constitution,  I  reluctantly  but  determinedly 
forbore.  Was  there  some  miracle  at  work  here ;  like 
those  Fire-balls,  and  supernal  and  infernal  prodigies, 
which,  in  the  case  of  the  Jewish  Mysteries,  have  also 
more  than  once  scared-back  the  Alien  ?  Be  this  as  it 
may,  such  failure  on  my  part,  after  best  efforts,  must 
excuse  the  imperfection  of  this  sketch ;  altogether  in- 
complete, yet  the  completest  I  could  give  of  a  Sect  too 
singular  to  be  omitted. 

'  Loving  my  own  life  and  senses  as  I  do,  no  power  shall 
induce  me,  as  a  private  individual,  to  open  another 
Fashionable  Novel.  But  luckily,  in  this  dilemma,  comes 
a  hand  from  the  clouds  ;  whereby  if  not  victory,  deliver- 
ance is  held  out  to  me.  Round  one  of  those  Book-pack- 
ages, which  the  StiUschzueigen' sche  Buchha7idlujig  is  in 
the  habit  of  importing  from  England,  come,  as  is  usual, 
various  waste  printed-sheets  (^Macu/atiif'-bliitte?'),  by  way 
of  interior  wrappage:  into  these  the  Clothes-Philosopher, 
with  a  certain  Mohamedan  reverence  even  for  waste- 
paper,  where  curious  knowledge  will  sometimes  hover, 
disdains  not  to  cast  his  eye.  Readers  may  judge  of  his 
astonishment  when  on  such  a  defaced  stray-sheet,  prob- 
ably the  outcast  fraction  of  some  English  Periodical, 
such  as  they  name  Magazine^  appears  something  like  a 
Dissertation  on  this  very  subject  of  Fashiojiahle  Novels  ! 
It  sets  out,  indeed,  chiefly  from  the  Secular  point  of 
view  ;  directing  itself,  not  without  asperity,  against  some 
to  me  unknown  individual,  named  Pelham^  who  seems 
to  be  a  Mystagogue,  and  leading  Teacher  and  Preacher 
of  the  Sect ;  so  that,  what  indeed  otherwise  was  not  to 
be  expected  in  such  a  fugitive  fragmentary  sheet,  the 


THE   DANDIACAL   BODY.  253 

true  secret,  the  Religious  physiognomy  and  physiology 
of  the  Dandiacal  Body,  is  nowise  laid  fully  open  there. 
Nevertheless,  scattered  lights  do  from  time  to  time 
sparkle  out,  whereby  I  have  endeavoured  to  profit.  Nay, 
in  one  passage  selected  from  the  Prophecies,  or  Mythic  5 
Theogonies,  or  whatever  they  are  (for  the  style  seems 
very  mixed)  of  this  Mystagogue,  I  find  what  appears  to 
be  a  Confession  of  Faith,  or  Whole  Duty  of  Man,  ac- 
cording to  the  tenets  of  that  Sect.  Which  Confession 
or  Whole  Duty,  therefore,  as  proceeding  from  a  source  10 
so  authentic,  I  shall  here  arrange  under  Seven  distinct 
Articles,  and  in  very  abridged  shape  lay  before  the  Ger- 
man world ;  therewith  taking  leave  of  this  matter.  Ob- 
serve also,  that  to  avoid  possibility  of  error,  I,  as  far  as 
may  be,  quote  literally  from  the  Original  :  15 

*ARTI,CLES    OF    FAITH. 

''  I.  Coats  should  have  nothing  of  the  triangle  about 
'  them  ;  at  the  same  time,  wrinkles  behind  should  be  care- 
'  fully  avoided. 

"  2.  The  collar  is  a  very  important  point :  it  should  be 
'  low  behind,  and  slightly  rolled.  20 

"3.  No  license  of  fashion  can  allow  a  man  of  delicate 
'  taste  to  adopt  the  posterial  luxuriance  of  a  Hottentot. 

"  4.    There  is  safety  in  a  swallow-tail. 

"  5.  The  good  sense  of  a  gentleman  is  nowhere  more 
'  finely  developed  than  in  his  rings.  -5 

"  6.  It  is  permitted  to  mankind,  under  certain  restric- 
'  tions,  to  wear  white  waistcoats. 

''  7.  The  trousers  must  be  exceedingly  tight  across  the 
'  hips." 

'  All    which    Propositions  I,   for  the   present,   content  3° 
'  myself  with   modestly  but  peremptorily  and  irrevocably 
'  denying. 


254 


SA  A'  TO  A'   A'ESA  A'  Tl/S. 


'  In  Strange  contrast  with  this  Dandiacal  Body  stands 
another  British  Sect,  originally,  as  I  understand,  of  Ire- 
land, where  its  chief  seat  still  is  ;  but  known  also  in  the 
main  Island,  and  indeed  everywhere  rapidly  spreading. 
As  this  Sect  has  hitherto  emitted  no  Canonical  Books, 
it  remains  to  me  in  the  same  state  of  obscurity  as  the 
Dandiacal,  which  has  published  Books  that  the  unas- 
sisted human  faculties  are  inadequate  to  read.  The 
members  appear  to  be  designated  by  a  considerable 
diversity  of  names,  according  to  their  various  places  of 
establishment :  in  England  they  are  generally  called  the 
Drudge  Sect ;  also,  unphilosophically  enough,  the  White 
Negroes ;  and,  chiefly  in  scorn  by  those  of  other  com- 
munions, the  Ragged-Beggar  Sect.  In  Scotland,  again, 
I  find  them  entitled  Hallanshakers^  or  the  Stook  of  Duds 
Sect;  any  individual  communicant  is  named  Stook  of 
Duds  (that  is,  Shock  of  Rags),  in  allusion,  doubtless,  to 
their  professional  Costume.  While  in  Ireland,  which, 
as  mentioned,  is  their  grand  parent  hive,  they  go  by  a 
perplexing  multiplicity  of  designations,  such  as  Bog- 
trotters^  Redshanks^  Ribboiwicn,  Cottiers^  Peep-of-Day  Boys, 
Babes  in  the  Wood,  Rockites,  Poor-Slaves :  w^hich  last, 
however,  seems  to  be  the  primary  and  generic  name ; 
whereto,  probably  enough,  the  others  are  only  subsidiary 
species,  or  slight  varieties ;  or,  at  most,  propagated  off- 
sets from  the  parent  stem,  whose  minute  subdivisions, 
and  shades  of  difference,  it  were  here  loss  of  time  to 
dwell  on.  Enough  for  us  to  understand,  what  seems 
indubitable,  that  the  original  Sect  is  that  of  the  Poor- 
Slaves ;  whose  doctrines,  practices,  and  fundamental 
characteristics  pervade  and  animate  the  whole  Body, 
howsoever  denominated  or  outwardly  diversified. 

'  The    precise    speculative    tenets    of    this    Brother- 
hood :    how  the  Universe,  and  Man,  and  Man's  Life, 


THE   DANDIACAL   BODY.  255 

picture  themselves  to  the  mind  of  an  Irish  Poor-Slave  ; 
with  what  feelings  and  opinions  he  looks  forward  on 
the  Future,  round  on  the  Present,  back  on  the  Past,  it 
were  extremely  difficult  to  specify.  Something  Monastic 
there  appears  to  be  in  their  Constitution  :  we  find  them  5 
bound  by  the  two  Monastic  Vows,  of  Poverty,  and  Obe- 
dience ;  which  Vows,  especially  the  former,  it  is  said, 
they  observe  with  great  strictness  ;  nay,  as  I  have  un- 
derstood it,  they  are  pledged,  and  be  it  by  any  solemn 
Nazarene  ordination  or  not,  irrevocably  consecrated  10 
thereto,  even  before  birth.  That  the  third  Monastic 
Vow,  of  Chastity,  is  rigidly  enforced  among  them,  I  find 
no  ground  to  conjecture. 

'  Furthermore,  they  appear  to   imitate  the  Dandiacal 
Sect    in    their    grand    principle    of   wearing   a   peculiar  15 
Costume.     Of  which  Irish  Poor-Slave  Costume  no  de- 
scription will   indeed  be  found  in  the  present  Volume ; 
for  this  reason,  that  by  the  imperfect  organ  of  Language 
it  did  not  seem  describable.     Their  raiment  consists  of 
innumerable  skirts,  lappets,  and  irregular  wings,  of  all  20 
cloths  and  of  all  colours  ;  through  the  labyrinthic  intri- 
cacies of  which  their  bodies  are  introduced  by  some  un- 
known process.     It  is  fastened  together  by  a  multiple 
combination  of  buttons,  thrums  and  skewers ;  to  which 
frequently  is  added  a  girdle  of  leather,  of  hempen  or  25 
even  of  straw  rope,  round  the  loins.     To  straw  rope,  in- 
deed,  they   seem   partial,    and  often  wear  it  by  way  of 
sandals.     In  head-dress  they  affect  a  certain  freedom  ; 
hats   with   partial   brim,  without   crown,  or  with  only  a 
loose,  hinged,  or  valved  crown ;  in  the  former  case,  they  30 
sometimes  invert  the  hat,  and  wear  it  brim  uppermost, 
like  a  University-cap,  with  what  view  is  unknown. 

'  The  name  Poor-Slaves,  seems  to  indicate  a  Slavonic, 
Polish,  or  Russian  origin  :    not  so,  however,  the  interior 


2s6 


SARTOR   RESARTUS. 


essence  and  spirit  of  their  Superstition,  which  rather 
displays  a  Teutonic  or  Druidical  character.  One  might 
fancy  them  worshippers  of  Hertha,  or  the  Earth :  for 
they  dig  and  affectionately  work  continually  in  her 
bosom  ;  or  else,  shut-up  in  private  Oratories,  meditate 
and  manipulate  the  substances  derived  from  her ;  sel- 
dom looking-up  towards  the  Heavenly  Luminaries,  and 
then  with  comparative  indifference.  Like  the  Druids, 
on  the  other  hand,  they  live  in  dark  dwellings  ;  often 
even  breaking  their  glass-windows,  where  they  find 
such,  and  stuffing  them  up  with  pieces  of  raiment,  or 
other  opaque  substances,  till  the  fit  obscurity  is  restored. 
Again,  like  all  followers  of  Nature-Worship,  they  are 
liable  to  outbreakings  of  an  enthusiasm  rising  to  feroc- 
ity ;  and  burn  men,  if  not  in  wicker  idols,  yet  in  sod 
cottages. 

'  In  respect  of  diet,  they  have  also  their  observances. 
All  Poor-Slaves  are  Rhizophagous  (or  Root-eaters);  a 
few  are  Ichthyophagous,  and  use  Salted  Herrings  : 
other  animal  food  they  abstain  from ;  except  indeed, 
with  perhaps  some  strange  inverted  fragment  of  a  Brah- 
minical  feeling,  such  animals  as  die  a  natural  death. 
Their  universal  sustenance  is  the  root  named  Potato, 
cooked  by  fire  alone  ;  and  generally  without  condiment 
or  relish  of  any  kind,  save  an  unknown  condiment 
named  Pointy  into  the  meaning  of  which  I  have  vainly 
inquired  ;  the  victual  Potatoes-and- Point  not  appearing, 
at  least  not  with  specific  accuracy  of  description,  in  any 
European  Cookery-Book  whatever.  For  drink,  they  use, 
with  an  almost  epigrammatic  counterpoise  of  taste, 
Milk,  which  is  the  mildest  of  liquors,  and  Potheen^ 
which  is  the  fiercest.  This  latter  I  have  tasted,  as  well 
as  the  English  Blue-Ruin^  and  the  Scotch  Whisky^  anal- 
ogous fluids  used  by  the  Sect  in  those  countries :   it  evi- 


THE   DANDIACAL   BODY. 


257 


dently  contains  some  form  of  alcohol,  in  the  highest 
state  of  concentration,  though  disguised  with  acrid  oils  : 
and  is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  pungent  substance  known 
to  me,  —  indeed,  a  perfect  liquid  fire.  In  all  their  Re- 
ligious Solemnities,  Potheen  is  said  to  be  an  indispensa-  5 
ble  requisite,  and  largely  consumed. 

'An  Irish  Traveller,  of  perhaps  common  veracity,  who 
presents  himself  under  the  to  me  unmeaning  title  of  The 
late  John  Bernard^  offers  the  following  sketch  of  a  do- 
mestic establishment,  the  inmates  whereof,  though  such  10 
is  not  stated  expressly,  appear  to  have  been  of  that 
Faith.  Thereby  shall  my  German  readers  now  behold 
an  Irish  Poor-Slave,  as  it  were  with  their  own  eyes  ;  and 
even  see  him  at  meat.  Moreover,  in  the  so  precious 
waste-paper  sheet  above  mentioned,  I  have  found  some  15 
corresponding  picture  of  a  Dandiacal  Household,  painted 
by  that  same  Dandiacal  Mystagogue,  or  Theogonist : 
this  also,  by  way  of  counterpart  and  contrast,  the  world 
shall  look  into. 

'  First,  therefore,  of  the  Poor-Slave,  who  appears  like-  20 
wise  to  have  been  a  species  of  Innkeeper.    I  quote  from 
the  original : 

POOR-SLAVE    HOUSEHOLD. 

"The  furniture    of   this    Caravansera    consisted    of    a 
'  large   iron   Pot,   two  oaken   Tables,   two   Benches,   two 

*  Chairs,  and  a  Potheen  Noggin.     There  was  a  loft  above  25 

*  (attainable  by  a  ladder),  upon  which  the  inmates  slept ; 
'  and  the  space  below  was  divided  by  a  hurdle  into  two 
'  Apartments  ;  the  one  for  their  cow  and  pig,  the  other  for 
'  themselves  and  guests.    On  entering  the  house  we  discov- 

'  ered  the  family,  eleven  in  number,  at  dinner  :  the  father  3° 
'  sitting  at  the  top,  the  mother  at  the  bottom,  the  children  on 
'  each  side,  of  a  large  oaken  Board  which  was  scooped-out 


^58 


SAKTOR   RESARTUS. 


'  in  the  middle,  like  a  Trough,  to  receive  the  contents  of 
'  their  Pot  of  Potatoes.  Little  holes  were  cut  at  equal  dis- 
'  tance  to  contain  Salt ;  and  a  bowl  of  Milk  stood  on  the 
'  table :  all  the  luxuries  of  meat  and  beer,  bread,  knives 
5  'and  dishes  were  dispensed  with."  The  Poor-Slave  him- 
'  self  our  Traveller  found,  as  he  says,  broad-backed,  black- 
'  browed,  of  great  personal  strength,  and  mouth  from  ear 
'  to  ear.  His  Wife  was  a  sun-browned  but  well-featured 
'  woman ;  and  his  young  ones,  bare  and  chubby,  had 
lo  '  the  appetite  of  ravens.  Of  their  Philosophical  or  Relig- 
'  ious  tenets  or  observances,  no  notice  or  hint. 

'  But  now,  secondly,  of  the  Dandiacal  Household ;  in 
'  which,  truly,  that  often-mentioned  Mystagogue  and  in- 
'  spired  Penman   himself  has   his  abode : 

DANDIACAL    HOUSEHOLD. 

15  "  A  Dressing-room  splendidly  furnished  ;  violet-coloured 
'  curtains,  chairs  and  ottomans  of  the  same  hue.  Two  full- 
'  length  Mirrors  are  placed,  one  on  each  side  of  a  table, 
'  which  supports  the  luxuries  of  the  Toilet.  Several  Bottles 
'  of  Perfumes,  arranged  in  a  peculiar  fashion,  stand  upon 

20  '  a  smaller  table  of  mother-of-pearl :  opposite  to  these  are 
'  placed  the  appurtenances  of  Lavation  richly  wrought  in 
'  frosted  silver.  A  Wardrobe  of  Buhl  is  on  the  left ;  the 
'  doors  of  which,  being  partly  open,  discover  a  profusion 
'  of  Clothes  ;  Shoes  of  a  singularly  small  size  monopolise 

25  '  the  lower  shelves.  Fronting  the  wardrobe  a  door  ajar 
'  gives  some  slight  glimpse  of  a  Bath-room.  Folding- 
'  doors  in  the  background.  —  Enter  the  Author,"  our 
'  Theogonist  in  person,  "  obsequiously  preceded  by  a 
'  French  Valet,  in  white  silk  Jacket  and  cambric  Apron." 

30  '  Such  are  the  two  Sects  which,  at  this  moment,  divide 
'  the  more  unsettled   portion  of  the  British  People  ;  and 


THE   DANDIACAL    BODY.  259 

agitate  that  ever-vexed  country.  To  the  eye  of  the 
poUtical  Seer,  their  mutual  relation,  pregnant  with  the 
elements  of  discord  and  hostility,  is  far  from  consoling. 
These  two  principles  of  Dandiacal  Self-worship  or 
Demon-worship,  and  Poor-Slavish  or  Drudgical  Earth-  5 
worship,  or  whatever  that  same  Drudgism  may  be,  do  as 
yet  indeed  manifest  themselves  under  distant  and 
nowise  considerable  shapes  :  nevertheless,  in  their  roots 
and  subterranean  ramifications,  they  extend  through  the 
entire  structure  of  Society,  and  work  unweariedly  in  the  10 
secret  depths  of  English  national  Existence  ;  striving  to 
separate  and  isolate  it  into  two  contradictory,  uncommu- 
nicating  masses. 

'  In  numbers,   and  even  individual  strength,  the  Poor- 
Slaves  or  Drudges,  it  would  seem,  are  hourly  increasing.  15 
The   Dandiacal,   again,   is    by  nature    no   proselytising 
Sect ;  but  it  boasts  of  great  hereditary  resources,  and  is 
strong    by    union ;     whereas    the    Drudges,    split    into 
parties,  have  as  yet  no  rallying-point ;  or  at  best,  only 
cooperate   by  means    of    partial   secret  affiliations.     If,  20 
indeed,  there  were  to  arise  a   Co77imunion  of  Drudges^ 
as    there    is    already    a    Communion    of    Saints,    what 
strangest  effects   would   follow   therefrom !     Dandyism 
as  yet   affects    to    look-down    on    Drudgism :    but  per- 
haps the  hour  of  trial,  when  it  will  be  practically  seen  25 
which  ought  to  look  down,  and  which  up,  is  not  so  dis- 
tant. 

'  To  me  it  seems  probable  that  the  two  Sects  will  one 
day  part  England  between  them  ;  each  recruiting  itself 
from  the  intermediate  ranks,  till  there  be  none  left  to  30 
enlist  on  either  side.  Those  Dandiacal  Manicheans, 
with  the  host  of  Dandyising  Christians,  will  form  one 
body :  the  Drudges,  gathering  round  them  whosoever  is 
Drudgical,  be  he  Christian  or  Infidel  Pagan  ;  sweeping 


2  6o  SAA'TOR   RESARTUS. 

up  likewise  all  manner  of  Utilitarians,  Radicals,  refrac- 
tory Potwallopers,  and  so  forth,  into  their  general  mass, 
will  form  another.  I  could  liken  Dandyism  and  Drudg- 
ism  to  two  bottomless  boiling  Whirlpools  that  had  broken- 
out  on  opposite  quarters  of  the  firm  land :  as  yet  they 
appear  only  disquieted,  foolishly  bubbling  wells,  which 
man's  art  might  cover-in  ;  yet  mark  them,  their  diameter 
is  daily  widening  ;  they  are  hollow  Cones  that  boil-up 
from  the  infinite  Deep,  over  which  your  firm  land  is  but 
a  thin  crust  or  rind  !  Thus  daily  is  the  intermediate 
land  crumbling-in,  daily  the  empire  of  the  two  Buchan- 
Bullers  extending ;  till  now  there  is  but  a  foot-plank,  a 
mere  film  of  Land  between  them ;  this  too  is  washed 
away  :  and  then  —  we  have  the  true  Hell  of  Waters, 
and  Noah's  Deluge  is  outdeluged ! 

*0r  better,  I  might  call  them  two  boundless,  and  in- 
deed unexampled  Electric  Machines  (turned  by  the 
"  Machinery  of  Society "),  with  batteries  of  opposite 
quality ;  Drudgism  the  Negative,  Dandyism  the  Posi- 
tive :  one  attracts  hourly  towards  it  and  appropriates  all 
the  Positive  Electricity  of  the  Nation  (namely,  the  Money 
thereof) ;  the  other  is  equally  busy  with  the  Negative  (that 
is  to  say  the  Hunger),  which  is  equally  potent.  Hither- 
to you  see  only  partial  transient  sparkles  and  sputters ; 
but  wait  a  little,  till  the  entire  nation  is  in  an  electric 
state ;  till  your  whole  vital  Electricity,  no  longer  health- 
fully Neutral,  is  cut  into  two  isolated  portions  of  Posi- 
tive and  Negative  (of  Money  and  of  Hunger) ;  and  stands 
there  bottled-up  in  two  World-Batteries  !  The  stirring 
of  a  child's  finger  brings  the  two  together ;  and  then  — 
What  then  ?  The  Earth  is  but  shivered  into  impalpable 
smoke  by  that  Doom's-thunderpeal ;  the  Sun  misses  one 
of  his  Planets  in  Space,  and  thenceforth  there  are  no 
eclipses  of  the  Moon.  —  Or  better  still,  I  might  liken' 


TAILORS.  261 

O,  enough,  enough  of  Ukenings  and  simiUtudes ;  in 
excess  of  which,  truly,  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  Teufels- 
drockh  or  ourselves  sin  the  more. 

We  have  often  blamed  him  for  a  habit  of  wire-drawing 
and  over-refining ;  from  of  old  we  have  been  familiar  with  5 
his  tendency  to  Mysticism  and  Religiosity,  whereby  in 
every  thing  he  was  still  scenting-out  Religion  :  but  never 
perhaps  did  these  amaurosis-suffusions  so  cloud  and  dis- 
tort his  otherwise  most  piercing  vision,  as  in  this  of  the 
Dandiacal  Body  I  Or  was  there  something  of  intended  10 
satire ;  is  the  Professor  and  Seer  not  quite  the  blinkard 
he  affects  to  be  ?  Of  an  ordinary  mortal  we  should  have 
decisively  answered  in  the  affirmative ;  but  with  a  Teu- 
felsdrockh  there:  ever  hovers  some  shade  of  doubt.  In  the 
mean  while,  if  satire  were  actually  intended,  the  case  is  15 
little  better.  There  are  not  wanting  men  who  will  answer  : 
Does  your  Professor  take  us  for  simpletons  ?  His  irony 
has  overshot  itself  ;  we  see  through  it,  and  perhaps  through 
him. 


CHAPTER    XL 


TAILORS. 


Thus,  however,  has  our  first  Practical  Inference  from  20 
the  Clothes-Philosophy,  that  which  respects  Dandies,  been 
sufficiently  drawn ;  and  we  come  now  to  the  second,  con- 
cerning Tailors.  On  this  latter  our  opinion  happily  quite 
coincides  with  that  of  Teufelsdrockh  himself,  as  expressed 
in  the  concluding  page  of  his  Volume ;  to  whom,  there-  25 
fore,  we  willingly  give  place.  Let  him  speak  his  own  last 
words,  in  his  own  way : 


262  SARTOR    RESARTUS. 

'  Upwards  of  a  century,'  says  he,  '  must  elapse,  and 
still  the  bleeding  fight  of  Freedom  be  fought,  whoso  is 
noblest  perishing  in  the  van,  and  thrones  be  hurled  on 
altars  like  Pelion  on  Ossa,  and  the  Moloch  of  Iniquity 
have  his  victims,  and  the  Michael  of  Justice  his  martyrs, 
before  Tailors  can  be  admitted  to  their  true  prerogatives 
of  manhood,  and  this  last  wound  of  suffering  Humanity 
be  closed. 

'  If  aught  in  the  history  of  the  world's  blindness  could 
surprise  us,  here  might  we  indeed  pause  and  wonder. 
An  idea  has  gone  abroad,  and  fixed  itself  down  into  a 
wide-spreading  rooted  error,  that  Tailors  are  a  distinct 
species  in  Physiology,  not  Men,  but  fractional  Parts  of 
a  Man.  Call  any  one  a  Schneider  (Cutter,  Tailor),  is  it 
not,  in  our  dislocated,  hoodwinked,  and  indeed  delirious 
condition  of  Society,  equivalent  to  defying  his  perpetual 
fellest  enmity  ?  The  epithet  schneidermdssig  (Tailor- 
like) betokens  an  otherwise  unapproachable  degree  of 
pusillanimity:  we  introduce  a  Tailor' s-Melancholy.  more 
opprobrious  than  any  Leprosy,  into  our  Books  of  Medi- 
cine ;  and  fable  I  know  not  what  of  his  generating  it  by 
living  on  Cabbage.  Why  should  I  speak  of  Hans  Sachs 
(himself  a  Shoemaker,  or  kind  of  Leather-Tailor),  with 
his  Schneider  viit  dein  Patiier  ?  Why  of  Shakespeare,  in 
his  Ta7ning  of  the  Shrew,  and  elsewhere  ?  Does  it  not 
stand  on  record  that  the  English  Queen  Elizabeth,  re- 
ceiving a  deputation  of  Eighteen  Tailors,  addressed  them 
with  a  "  Good  morning,  gentlemen  both  ! "  Did  not  the 
same  virago  boast  that  she  had  a  Cavalry  Regiment, 
whereof  neither  horse  nor  man  could  be  injured  ;  her 
Regiment,  namely,  of  Tailors  on  Mares  ?  Thus  every- 
where is  the  falsehood  taken  for  granted,  and  acted  on 
as  an  indisputable  fact. 

'  Nevertheless,  need  I  put  the  question  to  any  Physi- 


TAILORS. 


263 


'  ologist,  whether  it  is  disputable  or  not  ?  Seems  it  not 
'  at  least  presumable,  that,  under  his  Clothes,  the  Tailor 
'has  bones,  and  viscera,  and  other  muscles  than  the 
'  sartorius  ?  Which  function  of  manhood  is  the  Tailor  not 
'  conjectured  to  perform  ?  Can  he  not  arrest  for  debt  ?  5 
'  Is  he  not  in  most  countries  a  tax-paying  animal  ? 

'  To  no  reader  of  this  Volume  can  it  be  doubtful  which 
'  conviction  is  mine.  Nay,  if  the  fruit  of  these  long  vigils, 
'  and  almost  preternatural  Inquiries,  is  not  to  perish  utter- 

*  ly,  the  world  will  have  approximated  towards  a  higher  10 
'  Truth  ;  and  the  doctrine,  which  Swift,  with  the  keen  fore- 

*  cast  of  genius,  dimly  anticipated,  will  stand  revealed  in 
'  clear  light :  that  the  Tailor  is  not  only  a  Man,  but  some- 
'  thing  of  a  Creator  or  Divinity.     Of  Franklin  it  was  said, 
'that  "he  snatched  the  Thunder  from  Heaven  and  the  15 
'  Sceptre  from  Kings:  "  but  which  is  greater,  I  would  ask, 

'  he  that  lends,  or  he  that  snatches  ?  For,  looking  away 
'  from  individual  cases,  and  how  a  Man  is  by  the  Tailor 
'  new-created  into  a  Nobleman,  and  clothed  not  only  with 
'  Wool  but  with  Dignity  and  a  Mystic  Dominion,  —  is  not  20 
'  the  fair  fabric  of  Society  itself,  with  all  its  royal  mantles 
'  and  pontifical  stoles,  whereby,  from  nakedness  and  dis- 
'  memberment,  we  are  organized  into  Polities,  into  nations, 
'  and  a  whole  cooperating  Mankind,  the  creation,  as  has 
'  here  been  often  irrefragably  evinced,  of  the  Tailor  alone  ?  25 

*  —  What  too  are  all  Poets   and  moral  Teachers,  but  a 

*  species  of  Metaphorical  Tailors  ?  Touching  which 
'  high  Guild  the  greatest  living  Guild-brother  has  trium- 
'  phantly  asked  us  :    "  Nay,  if  thou  wilt  have  it,  who  but 

'  the  Poet  first  made  Gods  for  men  ;  brought  them  down  3° 
'to  us  ;   and  raised  us  up  to  them  ?  " 

'And  this  is  he,  whom  sitting  downcast,  on  the  hard 
'  basis  of  his  Shopboard,  the  world  treats  with  contumely,. 
'  as  the  ninth  part  of  a  man  !     Look  up,  thou  much-in- 


264  SAR7VR    RESAKTUS. 

jured  one,  look  up  with  the  kindling  eye  of  hope,  and 
prophetic  bodings  of  a  noble  better  time.  Too  long 
hast  thou  sat  there,  on  crossed  legs,  wearing  thy  ankle- 
joints  to  horn ;  like  some  sacred  Anchorite,  or  Catholic 
Fakir,  doing  penance,  drawing  down  Heaven's  richest 
blessings,  for  a  world  that  scoffed  at  thee.  Be  of  hope  ! 
Already  streaks  of  blue  peer  through  our  clouds;  the 
thick  gloom  of  Ignorance  is  rolling  asunder,  and  it  will 
be  Day.  Mankind  will  repay  with  interest  their  long- 
accumulated  debt :  the  Anchorite  that  w^as  scoffed  at  will 
be  worshipped ;  the  Fraction  will  become  not  an  Integer 
only,  but  a  Square  and  Cube.  With  astonishment  the 
world  will  recognise  that  the  Tailor  is  its  Hierophant 
and  Hierarch,  or  even  its  God. 

'As  I  stood  in  the  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia,  and  looked 
upon  these  Four-and-Twenty  Tailors,  sewing  and  em- 
broidering that  rich  Cloth,  which  the  Sultan  sends  yearly 
for  the  Caaba  of  Mecca,  I  thought  within  myself :  How 
many  other  Unholies  has  your  covering  Art  made  holy, 
besides  this  Arabian  Whinstone  ! 

'  Still  more  touching  was  it  when,  turning  the  corner  of 
a  lane,  in  the  Scottish  Town  of  Edinburgh,  I  came  upon 
a  Signpost,  whereon  stood  written  that  such  and  such  a 
one  was  "Breeches-Maker  to  his  Majesty;"  and  stood 
painted  the  Effigies  of  a  Pair  of  Leather  Breeches,  and 
between  the  knees  these  memorable  words,  Sic  itur  ad 
ASTRA.  Was  not  this  the  martyr  prison-speech  of  a 
Tailor  sighing  indeed  in  bonds,  yet  sighing  towards 
deliverance,  and  prophetically  appealing  to  a  better 
day.-*  A  day  of  justice,  when  the  worth  of  Breeches 
would  be  revealed  to  man,  and  the  Scissors  become  for- 
ever venerable. 

'  Neither,  perhaps,  may  I  now  say,  has  his  appeal  been 
'  altogether  in  vain.     It  was  in  this  high  moment,  when 


FAREWELL. 


265 


'  the  soul,  rent,  as  it  were,  and  shed  asunder,  is  open  to 
'  inspiring  influence,  that  I  first  conceived  this  Work  on 
*  Clothes  :  the  greatest  I  can  ever  hope  to  do  ;  which  has 
'  already,  after  long  retardations,  occupied,  and  will  yet 
'  occupy,  so  large  a  section  of  my  Life  ;  and  of  which  the 
'  Primary  and  simpler  Portion  may  here  find  its  con- 
'  elusion.' 


CHAPTER    XII. 


FAREWELL. 


So  have  we  endeavoured,  from  the  enormous,  amor- 
phous Plum-pudding,  more  like  a  Scottish  Haggis,  which 
Herr  Teufelsdrockh  had  kneaded  for  his  fellow  mortals, 
to  pick  out  the  choicest  Plums,  and  present  them  separ- 
ately on  a  cover  of  our  own.  A  laborious,  perhaps  a 
thankless  enterprise;  in  which,  however,  something  of 
hope  has  occasionally  cheered  us,  and  of  which  we  can 
now  wash  our  hands  not  altogether  without  satisfaction. 
If  hereby,  though  in  barbaric  wise,  some  morsel  of  spirit- 
ual nourishment  have  been  added  to  the  scanty  ration  of 
our  beloved  British  world,  what  nobler  recompense  could 
the  Editor  desire  ?  If  it  prove  otherwise,  why  should  ^e 
murmur.?  Was  not  this  a  Task  which  Destiny,  in  any 
case,  had  appointed  him ;  which  having  now  done  with, 
he  sees  his  general  Day's-work  so  much  the  lighter,  so 
much  the  shorter  ? 

Of  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  it  seems  impossible  to  take 
leave  without  a  mingled  feeling  of  astonishment,  gratitude 
and  disapproval.  Who  will  not  regret  that  talents,  which 
might  have  profited  in  the  higher  walks  of  Philosophy,  or 
in  Art  itself,  have  been  so  much  devoted  to  a  rummaging 


2  66  SARTOR   RESARTUS. 

among  lumber-rooms  ;  nay,  too  often  to  a  scraping  in 
kennels,  where  lost  rings  and  diamond-necklaces  are  no- 
wise the  sole  conquests  ?  Regret  is  unavoidable  ;  yet 
censure  were  loss  of  time.  To  cure  him  of  his  mad 
5  humours  British  Criticism  would  essay  in  vain :  enough 
for  her  if  she  can,  by  vigilance,  prevent  the  spreading  of 
such  among  ourselves.  What  a  result,  should  this  pie- 
bald, entangled,  hyper-metaphorical  style  of  writing,  not 
to  say  of  thinking,  become  general  among  our  Literary 

10  men  !  As  it  might  so  easily  do.  Thus  has  not  the 
Editor  himself,  working  over  Teufelsdrockh's  German, 
lost  much  of  his  own  English  purity  ?  Even  as  the 
smaller  whirlpool  is  sucked  into  the  larger,  and  made  to 
whirl  along  with  it,  so  has  the  lesser  mind,  in  this  in- 

15  stance,  been  forced  to  become  portion  of  the  greater,  and, 
like  it,  see  all  things  figuratively :  which  habit  time  and 
assiduous  effort  will  be  needed  to  eradicate. 

Nevertheless,  wayward  as  our  Professor  shows  himself, 
is  there  any  reader  that  can  part  with  him  in  declared 

20  enmity  ?  Let  us  confess,  there  is  that  in  the  wild,  much- 
suffering,  much-inflicting  man,  which  almost  attaches  iis. 
His  attitude,  we  will  hope  and  believe,  is  that  of  a  man 
who  had  said  to  Cant,  Begone;  and  to  Dilettantism, 
Here  thou  canst  not  be  ;  and  to  Truth,  Be  thou  in  place 

25  of -all  to  me  :  a  man  who  had  manfully  defied  the  '  Time- 
'  Prince,'  or  Devil,  to  his  face ;  nay,  perhaps.  Hannibal- 
like, was  mysteriously  consecrated  from  birth  to  that 
warfare,  and  now  stood  minded  to  wage  the  same,  by  all 
weapons,  in  all  places,  at  all  times.     In  such  a  cause, 

30  any  soldier,  were  he  but  a  Polack  Scythe-man,  shall  be 
welcome. 

Still  the  question  returns  on  us :  How  could  a  man 
occasionally  of  keen  insight,  not  without  keeo  sense  of 
propriety,  who  had  real  Thoughts  to  communicate,  re- 


FAREWELL.  267 

solve  to  emit  them  in  a  shape  bordering  so  closely  on  the 
absurd  ?     Which  question  he  were  wiser  than  the  present 
Editor  who  should  satisfactorily  answer.     Our  conjecture 
has  sometimes  been,  that  perhaps  Necessity  as  well  as 
Choice  was  concerned   in  it.     Seems  it  not  conceivable    5 
that,  in  a  Life  like  our  Professor's,  where  so  much  bounti- 
fully given  by  Nature  had  in  Practice  failed  and  misgone. 
Literature  also  would  never  rightly  prosper :   that  striving 
with  his  characteristic  vehemence  to  paint  this  and  the 
other  Picture,  and  ever  without  success,  he  at  last  desper-  10 
ately  dashes  his  sponge,  full  of  all  colours,  against  the    "" 
canvas,  to  try  whether  it  will  paint  Foam  ?     With  all  his 
stillness,  there  were  perhaps  in  Teufelsdrockh  desperation 
enough  for  this. 

A  second  conjecture  we  hazard  with  even  less  warranty.  15 
It  is,  that  Teufelsdrockh  is  not  without  some  touch  of  the 
universal    feeling,    a    wish    to    proselytise.      How    often 
already  have  we  paused,  uncertain  whether  the  basis  of 
this  so  enigmatic  nature  were  really  Stoicism  and  Despair, 
or  Love  and  Hope  only  seared  into  the  figure  of  these  !  20 
Remarkable,  moreover,  is  this  saying  of  his  :    '  How  were 
Friendship  possible  ?   In  mutual  devotedness  to  the  Good 
and  True  :  otherwise  impossible ;  except  as  Armed  Neu- 
trality, or  hollow  Commercial  League.     A  man,  be  the 
Heavens  ever  praised,  is  sufficient  for  himself ;  yet  were  25 
ten  men,  united  in  Love,  capable  of  being  and  of  doing 
what  ten  thousand  singly  would  fail  in.     Infinite  is  the 
help  man  can  yield  to  man.'     And  now  in  conjunction 
therewith  consider  this  other :    '  It   is   the  Night  of  the  ' 
World,  and  still  long  till  it  be  Day  :  we  wander  amid  the  30 
glimmer  of  smoking  ruins,  and  the  Sun  and  the  Stars  of 
Heaven  are   as   if   blotted  out   for  a  season  ;    and  two 
immeasurable  Phantoms,  Hypocrisy  and  Atheism,  with 
the    Gowl,   Sensuality,    stalk    abroad   over  the   Earth, 


268  SAN  TOR   RESARTUS. 

'  and  call  it  theirs :  well  at  ease  are  the  Sleepers  for  whom 
'  Existence  is  a  shallow  Dream.' 

But  what  of  the  awestruck  Wakeful  who  find  it  a 
Reality  ?  Should  not  these  unite  ;  since  even  an  authen- 
5  tic  Spectre  is  not  visible  to  Two?  —  In  which  case  were 
this  enormous  Clothes- Volume  properly  an  enormous 
Pitchpan,  which  our  Teufelsdrockh  in  his  lone  watch- 
tower  had  kindled,  that  it  might  flame  far  and  wide 
through  the  Night,  and  many  a  disconsolately  wandering 

10  spirit  be  guided  thither  to  a  Brother's  bosom  !  —  We  say 
as  before,  with  all  his  malign  Indifference,  who  knows 
what  mad  Hopes  this  man  may  harbour  ? 

Meanwhile  there  is  one  fact  to  be  stated  here,  which 
harmonises  ill  with  such  conjecture ;  and,  indeed,  were 

15  Teufelsdrockh  made  like  other*  men,  might  as  good  as 
altogether  subvert  it.  Namely,  that  while  the  Beacon-fire 
blazed  its  brightest,  the  Watchman  had  quitted  it ;  that 
no  pilgrim  could  now  ask  him  :  Watchman,  what  of  the 
Night  1     Professor   Teufelsdrockh,   be    it    known,    is   no 

20  longer  visibly  present  at  Weissnichtwo,  but  again  to  all 
appearance  lost  in  space  !  Some  time  ago,  the  Hofrath 
Heuschrecke  was  pleased  to  favour  us  with  another 
copious  Epistle ;  wherein  much  is  said  about  the  '  Popu- 
lation-Institute';  much  repeated  in  praise  of  the  Paper- 

25  bag  Documents,  the  hieroglyphic  nature  of  which  our 
Hofrath  'still  seems  not  to  have  surmised ;  and,  lastly, 
the  strangest  occurrence  communicated,  to  us  for  the  first 
time,  in  the  following  paragraph  : 

'  Ew.    WohIgcho7'e7i    will    have    seen,   from    the    public 

30  '  Prints,  with  what  affectionate  and  hitherto  fruitless  solic- 
'  itude  Weissnichtwo  regards  the  disappearance  of  her 
'  Sage.     Might  but  the  united  voice  of  Germany  prevail 

'  *  on  him  to  return  ;  nay,  could  we  but  so  much  as  eluci- 
'  date  for  ourselves  by  what  mystery  he  went  away  !    But, 


FAREWELL.  269 

alas,  old  Lieschen  experiences  or  affects  the  profoundest 
deafness,  the  profoundest  ignorance  :  in  the  Wahngasse 
all  lies  swept,  silent,  sealed  up  ;  the  Privy  Council  itself 
can  hitherto  elicit  no  answer. 

'  It  had  been  remarked  that  while  the  agitating  news  of  5 
those  Parisian  Three  Days  flew  from  mouth  to  mouth, 
and  dinned  every  ear  in  Weissnichtwo,  Herr  Teufels- 
drockh  was  not  known,  at  the  Gans  or  elsewhere,  to 
have  spoken,  for  a  whole  week,  any  syllable  except  once 
these  three:  Es geht  an  (It  is  beginning).  Shortly  after,  10 
as  Ew.  Wohlgeboren  knows,  was  the  public  tranquillity 
here,  as  in  Berlin,  threatened  by  a  Sedition  of  the 
Tailors.  Nor  did  there  want  Evil-wishers,  or  perhaps 
mere  desperate  Alarmists,  who  asserted  that  the  closing 
Chapter  of  the  Clothes- Volume  was  to  blame.  In  this  15 
appalling  crisis,  the  serenity  of  our  Philosopher  was  in- 
describable :  nay,  perhaps,  through  one  humble  individ- 
ual, something  thereof  might  pass  into  the  Rath  (Coun- 
cil) itself,  and  so  contribute  to  the  country's  deliverance. 
The  Tailors  are  now  entirely  pacificated. —  20 

*  To  neither  of  these  two  incidents  can  I  attribute  our 
loss  :   yet  still  comes  there  the  shadow  of  a  suspicion  out 
of  Paris  and  its  Politics.     For  example,  when  the  Saint- 
Simonian  Society  transmitted  its  Propositions  hither,  and 
the  whole  Gans  was  one  vast  cackle  of  laughter,  lamenta-  25 
tion  and  astonishment,  our  Sage  sat  mute  ;  and  at  the  end 
of  the  third  evening,  said  merely :    "  Here  also  are  men 
who  have  discovered,  not  without  amazement,  that  Man 
is  still  Man  ;  of  which   high,   long-forgotten  Truth  you  -^ 
already    see    them    make    a    false    application."     Since  30 
then,  as  has  been  ascertained    by  examination   of  the 
Post-Director,  there  passed  at  least  one  Letter  with  its 
Answer  between  the  Messieurs  Bazard-Enfantin  and  our 
Professor  himself ;   of  what  tenor  can  now  only  be  con- 


270 


SA  A'  TO/C   RES  A  R  TUS. 


10 


'jectiired.     On  the  fifth  night  following,  he  was  seen  for 

*  the  last  time  ! 
'  Has  this  invaluable  man,  so  obnoxious  to  most  of  the 

*  hostile  Sects  that  convulse  our  Era,  been  spirited  away 

*  by  certain  of  their  emissaries  ;  or  did  he  go  forth  volun- 
'  tarily  to  their  head-quarters  to  confer  with  them,  and 
'  confront  them  ?  Reason  we  have,  at  least  of  a  negative 
'  sort,  to  believe  the  Lost  still  living :   our  widowed  heart 

*  also  whispers  that  ere  long  he  will  himself  give  a  sign. 
'  Otherwise,  indeed,  his  archives  must,  one  day,  be  opened 
'  by  Authority ;  where  much,  perhaps  the  Falingenesic 
'  itself,  is  thought  to  be  reposited.' 

Thus  far  the  Hofrath ;  who  vanishes,  as  is  his  wont, 
too  like  an  Ignis  Fatuus,  leaving  the  dark  still  darker. 

15  So  that  Teufelsdrockh's  public  History  were  not  done, 
then,  or  reduced  to  an  even,  unromantic  tenor ;  nay,  per- 
haps, the  better  part  thereof  were  only  beginning  ?  We 
stand  in  a  region  of  conjectures,  where  substance  has 
melted   into   shadow,  and   one   cannot   be   distinguished 

20  from  the  other.  May  Time,  which  solves  or  suppresses 
all  problems,  throw  glad  light  on  this  also  !  Our  own 
private  conjecture,  now  amounting  almost  to  certainty,  is 
that,  safe-moored  in  some  stillest  obscurity,  not  to  lie 
always  still,  Teufelsdrockh  is  actually  in  London  ! 

25  Here,  however,  can  the  present  Editor,  with  an  ambro- 
sial joy  as  of  over- weariness  falling  into  sleep,  lay  down 
his  pen.  Well  does  he  know,  if  human  testimony  be 
worth  aught,  that  to  innumerable  British  readers  likewise, 
this    is    a    satisfying    consummation ;    that    innumerable 

30  British  readers  consider  him,  during  these  current 
months,  but  as  an  uneasy  interruption  to  their  ways 
of  thought  and  digestion ;  and  indicate  so  much,  not 
without   a  certain   irritancy  and  even  spoken   invective. 


FAREWELL.  271 

For  which,  as  for  other  mercies,  ought  he  not  to  thank 
the  Upper  Powers  ?  To  one  and  all  of  you,  O  irritated 
readers,  he,  with  outstretched  arms  and  open  heart,  will 
wave  a  kind  farewell.  Thou,  too,  miraculous  Entity,  who 
namest  thyself  Yorke  and  Oliver,  and  with  thy  vivaci- 
ties and  genialities,  with  thy  ail-too  Irish  mirth  and  mad- 
ness, and  odour  of  palled  punch,  makest  such  strange 
work,  farewell ;  long  as  thou  canst,  fare-7^/^///  Have  we 
not,  in  the  course  of  Eternity,  travelled  some  months  of 
our  Life-journey  in  partial  sight  of  one  another  ;  have  we 
not  existed  together,  though  in  a  state  of  quarrel  ? 


NOTES. 


ABBREVIATIONS. 


C.  E.  L.  .  .  .  Thomas  Carlyle.  A  History  of  the  First  Forty  Years  of  His 
Life,  by  James  Anthony  Froude.     2  vols.     Lond.,  1S91. 

C.  L.  L.  .  .  .  Thomas  Carlyle.  A  History  of  His  Life  in  London  by  James 
Anthony  Froude.     2  vols.     Lond.,  1891. 

Essays.  .  .  .  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays:  Collected  and  Repub- 
lished by  Thomas  Carlyle.     4  vols.     Boston,  i860. 

L.  IV.  C     .   .   The  Last  Words  of  Thomas  Carlyle.     N.  Y.,  1892. 

Rem Reminiscences  by  Thomas  Carlyle.     Edited  by  Charles  Eliot 

Norton,    z  vols.     Lond.,  1887. 

E.  Ldf.  .  .  .  Early  Letters  of  Thomas  Carlyle,  1814-1826.  Edited  by 
Charles  Eliot  Norton.     Lond.,  1886. 

Le/f Letters   of  Thomas  Carlyle,  1 826-1 836.     Edited  by  Charles 

EUot  Norton.     Lond.,  1S89. 

G.-Corr.  .  .  .  Correspondence  between  Goethe  and  Carlyle.  Edited  by 
Charles  Eliot  Norton.     Lond.,  1887. 

C.-Trans.  .  .  Tales  by  Musaeus,  Tieck,  Richter,  translated  from  the  Ger- 
man by  Thomas  Carlyle.     2  vols.     Lond.,  1874. 

C.-Jonr.  .  .  .  MS.  Copy  of  Carlyle's  Journal,  partly  printed  in  C.  E.  L.,  in 
the  possession  of  Trof.  Norton. 


NOTES. 


PRELIMINARY. 

Mein  Vermachtniss.  This  motto  is  prefaced  to  Goethe's  Wilhelm 
Meistcr,  and  in  Carlyle's  translation  of  that  novel  runs  as  follows  : 

My  inheritance,  how  wide  and  fair  ! 
Time  is  my  estate  ;  to  time  I'm  heir. 

It  is  an  expansion  of  Cardan's  phrase,  "  Tempus  mea  possessio, 
tempus  ager  meus  "  ;  see  Forum,  Feb.,  1893,  P-  7^9-  ^or  ^  slight 
variant,  see  West-Oest.  Divan,  Hiknict  Nanieh ;  Goethe,  Sdnimt. 
Werke,  II,  238  ;  Stuttgart,  1873.  Carlyle  quotes  this  distich  in  his 
essay  on  Richter,  Essays,  II,  199,  in  Characteristics,  ib.  Ill,  48  ;  and 
repeatedly  in  his  correspondence.     Lett.,  177,  G.-Corr.,  253,  259. 

1  2.  the  torch  of  Science.  An  adaptation  of  "Truth  like  a 
torch,  the  more  it's  shook,  it  shines."  Carlyle  would  be  familiar 
with  it,  as  the  motto  to  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Lectures.  Goethe 
adapts  it  in  Maximen  tt.  Reflexio7ien,  II.  "Das  Wahre  ist  eine 
Fackel,  aber  eine  ungeheure  ;  desswegen  suchen  war  alle  nur  blinzend 
so  daran  vorbei  zu  kommen,  in  Furcht  sogar,  uns  zu  verbrennen." 
See  Ue  Morgan,  Budget  of  Paradoxes,  p.  210;  London,  1872.  I 
have  been  unable  to  trace  it  further. 

"  I  hope  in  his  hand  the  torch  of  eloquence  will  burn  bright  —  and 
shed  a  strong  ray  of  intellectual  light  over  the  whole  district." 
E.  Lett.,  43. 

1  7.  kindled  thereat.  "  We  have  sometimes  felt  as  if  his  light 
were,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  borrowed  one  ;  a  rush-light  kindled  at  the 
great  pitch  link  of  our  own  Blackwood's  Magazine.''^  Essays,  Ger- 
man Playwrights,  I,  401. 

1  15.  Lagrange  (1736-1813),  French  mathematician  and  critic  of 
Newton  :  he  received  many  marks  of  distinction  from  Frederick  the 


276  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,Cap.  I. 

Great,  the  French  Republic  and  Napoleon.  His  contribution  to 
mathematical  knowledge  is  his  theory  of  the  oneness  of  the  universe. 
1  16.  Laplace  (i 749-1827),  the  Newton  of  France.  With  the 
appearance  of  his  treatise,  Mecanique  Celeste,  the  last  threat  of 
instability  of  the  universe  was  removed.  Carlyle  saw  him  at  a  meet- 
ing of  the  I)istitut2tX  Paris  in  1824.  SeeAVw.  II,  163.  He  brackets 
the  two  names  in  Signs  of  the  Times  {Essays,  II,  143)  written  in 
1S29.  Illustrations  from  mathematics  came  readily  to  Carlyle. 
While  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  he  devoted  much  time 
to  the  study  of  mathematics  and  attracted  the  attention  of  Pro- 
fessor John  Leslie  by  his  powers  in  that  department.  He  trans- 
lated Legendre's  Elements  of  Geotnetry  (1824);  and  his  correspond- 
ence with  Robert  Mitchell  bristles  with  allusions  to  mathematical 
reading,  working  of  problems,  etc.  (see  E.  Lett.,  pp.  8-100,  passim). 
He  mentions  Lagrange's  Alicanique  Analytiqne  and  Laplace's  Meca- 
nique Celeste  together,  p.  72.  For  Carlyle's  account  of  his  enthusiasm 
for  this  study  see  G.-Corr.,  156,  n. 

1  19.  our  nautical  Logbooks.  "  His  view  of  the  world  is  a  cool, 
gently  scornful,  altogether  prosaic  one  :  his  sublimest  Apocalypse  of 
Nature  lies  in  the  microscope  and  telescope  ;  the  Earth  is  a  place 
for  producing  corn ;  the  Starry  Heavens  are  admirable  as  a  nautical 
time-keeper."     Essays,  Voltaire,  II,  36. 

"  '  What  is  grander  than  the  sun  ^ '  added  Wotton  ;  '  yet  we  all 
see  it  daily,  and  few  think  of  the  heavenly  lamp  save  as  a  ripener  of 
corn.  The  moon,  too,  and  the  stars  are  measured  in  their  courses  : 
but  astronomy  is  praised  or  tolerated  because  it  helps  us  in  navi- 
gating ships,  and  the  divine  horologe  is  rated  as  a  supplement  or 
substitute  for  Harrison's  time-keeper.' "  Z.  W.  C,  Wotton  Rein- 
fred,  70. 

2  1.  Werners  and  Huttons.  One  of  Carlyle's  chief  mannerisms 
is  to  make  names  of  persons,  events,  etc.,  plural,  for  the  sake  of 
avoiding  vagueness,  and  attaining  picturesque  effect.  See  p.  2, 
1.  7  ff.,  p.  3,  1.  II  f.  and  passim.  These  names  are  not  taken  at  ran- 
dom ;  they  were  the  rallying  cries  of  rival  theorists.  Abraham 
Gottlob  Werner  (1750-1817),  the  father  of  German  geology,  was 
inspector  of  the  mining  school  at  Freiberg.  His  theory  was  called 
the  Neptunist,  and  upheld  the  aqueous  origin  of  the  earth.  Geognosy 
was  a  term  invented  by  him  to  mean  "  the  natural  position  of  min- 
erals in  particular  rocks,  together  with  the  grouping  of  those  rocks, 
their  geographical  distribution  and  various  relations."  See  Lyell, 
Principles  of  Geology,  pp.  46-48,  N.  Y.,  i860.     James  Hutton  (1726- 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  I.]  PRELIMINAR  Y.  277 

1797),  was  a  Scotch  geologist  and  originator  of  the  Plutonian  theory; 
i.e.,  of  fire  as  an  agent  in  the  formation  of  the  planet.  His  Theory 
of  the  Earth  appeared  in  1795. 

"  I  still  remember  that  it  was  the  desire  to  read  Werner's  Min- 
eralogical  Doctrines  in  the  original,  that  first  set  me  on  studying 
German  ;  where  truly  I  found  a  mine,  far  different  from  any  of  the 
Freyberg  ones!"  G.-Corr.,  156  f.  See  also  E.  Lett.,  102,  114. 
Essays,  The  Diamond  Necklace,  IV,  14. 

2  3.  Royal  Society.  Incorporated  by  royal  charter,  Apr.  22, 
1663.  See  Green,  Short  History  of  the  English  People,  p.  596  ; 
N.  Y.,  1879. 

2  4-6.  Cooking  of  a  Dumpling.  An  allusion  to  John  Walcot's 
satirical  verses  on  George  III.,  "The  Apple  Dumplings  and  the 
King." 

Once  on  a  time  a  monarch,  tired  with  whooping, 
Whipping  and  spurring, 
Happy  in  worrying 
A  poor,  defenceless,  harmless  Buck 
(The  Horse  and  Rider  wet  as  Muck), 
From  his  high  consequence  and  wisdom  stooping, 
Enter'd,  through  curiosity,  a  cot 
Where  sat  a  poor  Old  Woman  and  her  pot. 

The  wrinkled,  blear-eyed,  good  old  Granny, 
In  this  same  cot,  illumed  by  many  a  cranny, 

Had  finish'd  Apple-dumplings  for  her  pot  : 
In  tempting  row  the  naked  Dumplings  lay. 
When,  lo  !  the  Monarch,  in  his  ?«?<«/ way, 
Like  Lightning  spoke  :  "  What's  this  ?  what's  this  ?  what  ?  what  ? ' 

Then,  taking  up  a  Dumpling  in  his  hand. 
His  eyes  with  admiration  did  expand. 

And  oft  did  Majesty  the  Dumpling  grapple  : 
"  'Tis  monstrous,  monstrous  hard  indeed,"  he  cried  ; 
"  What  makes  it,  pray,  so  hard?  "  —  the  Dame  replied. 

Low  curtseying,  "  Please  your  Majesty,  the  Apple."  — 

"  Very  astonishing  indeed  !  strange  thing  !  " 
(Turning  the  Dumpling  round,  rejoined  the  King) 
"  'Tis  most  extraordinary  then,  all  this  is  ; 
It  beats  Pinetti's  conjuring  all  to  pieces  ; 
Strange  I  should  never  of  a  Dumpling  dream  ! 
But,  Goody,  tell  me  where,  where,  where's  the  Seam  ?  " 

"  Sir,  there's  no  Seam,"  quoth  she  ;   "  I  never  knew 

That  folks  did  Apple-dumplings  sew  "  — 
"  No  !  "  cried  the  staring  Monarch  with  a  grin  ; 
"  How,  how  the  devil  got  the  Apple  in  ?  " 

The  Works  of  Peter  Pindar,  vol.  i,  p.  458  f.  ;   London,  1812. 


278  NOTES  [Bk.  I,Cap.  I. 

2  7.  disquisitions  on  the  Social  Contract.  "  At  any  rate,  what 
Treatises  on  the  Social  Contract,  on  the  Elective  Franchise,  the 
Rights  of  Man,  the  Rights  of  Property,  Codifications,  Institutions, 
Constitutions,  have  we  not,  for  long  years  groaned  under!  Or, 
again,  with  a  wider  survey,  consider  those  Essays  on  Man,  Thoughts 
on  Man,  Inquiries  concerning  Man  ;  not  to  mention  Evidences  of 
the  Christian  Faith,  Theories  of  Poetry,  Considerations  on  the  Origin 
of  Evil,  which  during  the  last  century  have  accumulated  on  us  to  a 
frightful  extent.  Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  231.  —  Social  Con- 
tract. Rousseau's  revolutionary  treatise,  Dii  Contrat  Social  on 
Principcs  dii  Droit  Politiqjie  (1762). 

2  8.  Standard  of  Taste.  Carlyle  has  in  mind  the  Essay  on  the 
Nature  and  Principles  of  Taste,  Archibald  Alison,  1790.  His  argu- 
ment is  based  on  the  principles  of  Association,  and  is  endorsed  by 
Jeffrey  :  see  Gates's  Selections  from  feffrey,  Athenaeum  Press  Series, 
1891  ;  and  C.  E.  L.,  I,  3S8;  Essays,  Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  155. — 
Migrations  of  the  Herring.  John  Gilpin's  paper,  On  the  Annual 
Passage  of  Herrings,  Am.  Society,  II.  268,  rnay  have  caught  Carlyle's 
eye  and  occasioned  the  reference.  Papers  on  this  subject  occur 
continually  in  the  publications  of  learned  societies. 

2  9.  Doctrine  of  Rent.  —  Theory  of  Value.  Necessary  parts  of 
all  discussions  on  Political  Economy.  See  the  works  of  Smith, 
Ricardo,  etc. 

"  Our  Scottish  sages  have  no  such  propensities  :  the  field  of  their 
life  shows  neither  briers  nor  roses ;  but  only  a'  flat,  continuous 
thrashing-floor  for  Logic,  whereon  all  questions,  from  the  '  Doctrine 
of  Rent '  to  the  *  Natural  History  of  Religion,'  are  thrashed  and  sifted 
with  the  same  mechanical  impartiality  !  "     Essays,  Buj-ns,  I,  297. 

2  10.  Philosophies  of  Language.  Schlegel's  Philosophische  Vor- 
lesiingen,  insbesojidere  i'lber  die  Philosophic  der  Sprache  njid  des 
Wortes  (1830)  is  the  most  remarkable  of  such  works.  —  of  History. 
Such  books  as  F.  v.  Schlegel's  (177 2-1 829)  Philosophic  der  Geschichte 
(1829)  and  "Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of  Modern  History"  by 
George  Miller,  D.D.,  2  vols.  ;  Dublin,  1816. 

2  11.  of  Pottery.  Eraser  for  April,  1830,  contains  a  criticism  of 
a  Lecture  by  Dr.  Black  on  "The  Philosophy  of  Pottery."  —  of  Ap- 
paritions, probably  referring  to  the  work  of  S.  Hibbert,  Sketches 
of  the  Philosophy  of  Apparitions,  their  Physical  Causes,  1825. — 
Intoxicating  Liquors.  Robert  Macnish,  who  figures  as  number 
sixty-seven  in  the  /^r^j^r  portraits,  published  in  1825  The  Anatomy 
of  Drtinkenness ;    and  in    1830    The  Philosophy  of  Sleep.       Carlyle 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  I]  PRELIMINAR  Y. 


279 


probably  blends  the  two  titles.  Macnish  wrote  also  a  burlesque 
article  on  "  The  Philosophy  of  Burking."  See  R.  Bates,  The  Maclise 
Portrait-Gallery,  p.  350  ff;  London,  1891.  Nodes  Ambrosianae,  III, 
108,  n.   1865. 

2  14.  probed,  dissected.  In  Signs  of  the  Tifnes,  referring  to 
Cabanis  and  his  Rapports  du  Physiqzie  etdic  Morale  de  r Homme ^TlxX^X^ 
says,  "  He  fairly  lays  open  our  moral  structure  with  his  dissecting 
knives  and  real  metal-probes  :  and  exhibits  it  to  the  inspection  of 
mankind,  by  Leuwenhoek  microscopes,  and  inflation  with  the  ana- 
tomical blowpipe."     Essays,  II,  144. 

2  17.  Stewarts.  See  2  1,  n.  Dugald  Stewart  (17 53-1828),  the 
famous  Scotch  philosopher,  professor  at  Edinburgh  from  1785  to 
1820.  —  Cousins.  Victor  Cousin  (1792-1867)  introduced  German 
philosophy  into  France  and  organized  French  primary  instruction. 
His  P2ssay  Du  Vrai,  du  Beati  et  du  Bien  (1854)  is  a  standard  work 
on  the  subject.  —  Royer-Collards.  Pierre  Paul  Royer-Collard  (1763- 
1845),  French  follower  of  Thomas  Reid,  founder  of  the  Scoto-French 
school  of  Philosophy. 

2  19.  Lawrences.  See  2  1,  n.  Sir  William  Lawrence's  course 
of  lectures  on  Physiology,  before  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons 
in  18 1 6-18,  had  raised  a  storm  of  controversy.  Bates,  Maclise 
Gallery,  p.  315.  —  Magendies.  Frangois  Magendie  (1783-1855),  one 
of  first  vivisectors  ;  he  investigated  the  functions  of  different  nerves. 
—  Bichats.  Maria  Fran9ois  Xavier  Bichat  (1771-1802),  famous 
French  surgeon  and  physiologist. 

2  26.  lives,  moves :  an  adaptation  of  Acts  xvii.  28.  See  also 
201  33,  and  246  33. 

2  30.  property  .  .  .  accident.  Terms  used  by  the  schoolmen  to 
distinguish  between  qualities  always  occurring  and  those  not  always 
occurring  in  an  object.  "  Accidens  est  quod  adest  atque  abest  sine 
subjecti  interitu." 

3  2.    Shakespeare  says  : 

Sure,  he,  that  made  us  with  such  large  discourse, 
Looking  before,  and  after,  gave  us  not 
That  capabiUty  and  godlike  reason 
To  fust  in  us  unus'd. 

Ha7idet,  iv.  4. 

Cp.  Shelley,  The  Skylark. 

"  But  man's  *  large  discourse  of  reason '  will  look  '  before  and 
after.'  "     Essays,  Signs  of  the  Tifnes,  II,  135. 

"  Let  us,  instead  of  gazing  idly  into  obscure  distance,  look  calmly 


28o  NOTES.  IBk.  I.Cap.  I. 

around  us  for  a  little  on  the  perplexed  scene  where  we  stand." 
ib.,  138. 

3  11.  Catholic  Emancipations.  The  year  1830  in  which  Sartor 
was  begun  was  one  of  the  most  eventful  in  European  history. 
O'Connell's  agitation  for  the  removal  of  civil  disabilities  from  the 
Catholics  culminated  in  the  passage  of  a  bill  for  their  emancipation 
in  1829.  Next  year  the  July  revolution  of  the  Three  Days  in  Paris 
overturned  the  throne  of  Charles  X.  and  gave  a  new  impetus  to  the 
demand  for  Parliamentary  reform  in  England.  The  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington, the  Tory  prime  minister,  would  not  listen  to  the  popular  cry 
and  was  driven  from  office.  After  being  thrown  out  by  the  Lords, 
Earl  Grey's  Reform  Bill  became  law  in  1832.  By  its  provisions, 
fifty-six  "  rotten  boroughs "  lost  the  right  to  be  represented  in 
Parliament,  and  the  franchise  wa^  given  to  large  towns  which  here- 
tofore had  possessed  no  such  right.  The  "  rotten  boroughs  "  were 
electoral  districts,  with  very  few  voters.  Old  Sarum  had  none. 
The  political  excitement  retarded  the  publication  of  Sartor. 

"  My  poor  Book,  as  you  have  perhaps  heard,  cannot  be  printed 
at  present;  for  this  plain  reason,  all  Book-selling  is  at  an  end, 
till  once  this  Reform  Bill  of  theirs  be  past."  Lett.,  259;  cp.  G.-Corr., 
290 ;  cp.  269  6. 

3  ]4.    watch-tower.     See  268  7.    Cf. 

Der  Dichter  steht  auf  einer  hoheren  Warte, 
Als  auf  den  Zinnen  der  Partei. 

Freiligrath,  A7ts  Spanien. 

3  16.  Horet  ihr  Herren.  Listen,  sirs,  and  let  me  tell  you.  The 
first  line  of  a  Volkslied  (see  Die  Deutschen  Volkslieder,  Simrock, 
1851,  p.  589),  supposed  to  be  uttered  by  the  bellman  on  his  nightly 
rounds.  As  every  hour  strikes,  he  reminds  those  awake  of  some 
Christian  doctrine  suggested  by  it.  Three  suggests  the  Trinity; 
twelve,  the  number  of  the  Apostles. 

Hort  ihr  Herrn  und  lasst  euch  sagen, 
Unsre  Glock  hat  Zehn  geschlagen, 
Zehn  Gebote  setzt  Gott  ein, 
Dass  wir  sollten  gliicklich  sein. 

There  is  an  English  version  :  — 

"  Listen,  good  people  and  hear  me  tell, 
One  now  strikes  from  the  belfrj'  bell,"  etc. 

Part  of  the  phrase  occurs  in  Musaeus,  Stiwime  Liebe.  See  C.-Trans., 
I,  38  f.     For  Carlyle's  encounter  with  a  watchman,  cp.  C.L.L.,  I,  158. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  I.]  rRELIMlNAR  Y.  .281 

3  22.     gold-mines  of  Finance.     Money-getting. 

3  23.  fat  oxen.  An  adaptation  of  Johnson's  comic  line,  "Who 
drives  fat  oxen  should  himself  be  fat,"  which  burlesques  "Who 
rules  o'er  freemen  should  himself  be  free."  Boswell,s2ib  ann.,  1784. 
Carlyle,  apparently  relying  on  his  memory,  made  the  line  "  Who 
kills  fat,"  etc.,  and  applied  it  to  the  game  of  politics.  Ruling  o'er 
freemen,  i.e.,  driving  fat  oxen,  makes  the  driver  (politician)  "  grow 
fat,"  i.e.,  prosper.  "  Horace  seems  to  think  that  who  drives  fat  oxen 
must  himself  be  fat  ;  and  that  Homer  and  Ennius  must  have 
acquired  gout  as  well  as  fame  by  their  praises  of  wine  "  ;  Malkin, 
Classical  Disquisitions,  p.  387.     Lond.,  1825. 

3  25.  goose-hunting.  Carlylean  adaptation  of  wild-goose  chase, 
"  the  pursuit  of  anything  in  ignorance  of  the  direction  it  will  take  ; 
hence  a  foolish  pursuit  or  enterprise.  According  to  Dyce,  the  name 
wild-goose  chase  was  applied  to  a  kind  of  horse  race,  in  which  two 
horses  were  started  together,  the  rider  who  gained  the  lead  forcing 
the  other  to  follow  him  wherever  he  chose  to  go."  Century  Diction- 
ary. 

3  28.    By  geometric  scale. 

In  mathematics  he  was  greater 
Than  Tycho  Brahe  or  Erra  Pater ; 
For  he  by  geometric  scale 
Could  take  the  size  of  pots  of  ale. 

Hudibras,  Pt.  I.  cant.   i. 

4  7.     many  shall  run.     See  Dan.  xii.  4. 

4  18.  these  his.  The  insertion  of  the  long  adjectival  phrase 
between  '  his  '  and  '  rambles '  is  good  German  usage  but  not  English. 
It  is  one  of  Carlyle's  devices  to  give  color  to  his  transparent  pretext 
that  the  book  is  from  the  German.     See  Introd. 

4  20.    realm  of  .  .  .  Night.     See  18  9,  n. 

4  22.  speculation  should  have.  "  Our  readers  will  permit  us  to 
explain  ourselves  by  a  figure.  On  the  stone  parapet  which  sur- 
rounds the  platform  of  Strasburg  cathedral  are  lines  cut  deeply 
towards  all  points  of  the  cojnpass,  which  accurately  mark  the  hori- 
zontal direction  in  which  the  chief  cities  of  Europe  lie  with  reference 
to  that  centre.  You  feel  yourself,  as  it  were,  in  the  central  point  of 
one  quarter  of  the  globe.     .     .     . 

And  by  this  emblem  we  try  to  illustrate  the  prevaiUng  tendency 
of  Ktmst  tind  Altert/mfu.  Its  object  was  not  to  announce  or 
describe  great,  isolated,  and  imposing  productions;  but  with  accu- 
rate, practised  glance  like  a  watchful  warder,  to  keep    a  vigilant 


282  NOTES.  fHk.  I,Cap.  I. 

lookout  in  all  directions  where  anything  excellent  or  promising 
appeared."  Letter  of  F.  V.  Miiller  translated  by  S.  Austin.  Charac- 
teristics of  Goethe,  III,  306.  Lond.,  1833.  Mrs.  Austin  was  a 
friend  of  the  Carlyles.  In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  C,  Dec.  25,  1832,  she 
mentions  the  progress  of  this  work.  C.  E.  L.,  II,  22,3-  It  is  a  likely 
place  for  Einschiebcl ;  for  the  paragraph  might  well  end  with 
"  Night."  However,  Goethe  sent  the  five  volumes  of  Kunst  u. 
Altherthuni  to  Carlyle  in  1828.     See  G.-Corr.,  53,  333. 

4  30.  cramp.  In  Eraser  and  later  eds.  it  stands  "cramps" 
uncorrected. 

5  2.  Learned.  Translation  of  "Gelehrter."  A  designed  Ger- 
manism.    See  4  18,  n. 

5  13.  Teufelsdrockh.  Devil's-dirt,  the  popular  German  for  assa- 
foetida.  First,  '  Teufelsdreck  ',  but  changed  to  the  present  form 
before  Feb.  10,  1833.  See  Lett.,  365,  n.  Carlyle's  intention  in  his 
title  may  be  seen  from  the  following  : 

"  I  am  struggling  forward  with  Dreck,  sick  enough,  but  not* in  bad 
heart.  I  think  the  world  will  nowise  be  enraptured  with  this  (medi- 
cinal) DeviPs  Duiigy     Lett.,  220. 

"  I  sometimes  think  the  book  will  prove  a  kind  of  medicinal 
assafoetida  for  the  pudding  stomach  of  England,  and  produce  new 
secretions  there."  Letter  to  J.  Carlyle,  July  17,  183 1.  C.  E.  L., 
II,  162.     Cp.  Browning,  Heretic'' s  Tragedy,  1.  65. 

5  13.  Weissnichtwo.  Know  not  where.  The  joke  is  as  old  as 
More's  Utopia  and  may  have  been  suggested  by  the  roguish  opening 
paragraph  of  The  Monastery,  which  lays  the  scene  in  the  village  of 
Kennaquhair.  To  see  how  this  name  could  mystify  an  Englishman 
of  genius,  consult  Ruskin,  Praeterita,  III,  140. 

5  20.  Die  Kleider.  In  his  letter  to  Carlyle  of  June  6,  1830, 
Goethe  says  he  intends  to  send  him  "  Ein  hochst  wichtiges  Heft- 
chen,  unter  dem  Titel :  Ueber  Werden  und  Wirken  der  Literatur  " 
(L.  Wachler,  Breslau,  1S29).  G.-Corr.,  195.  On  Aug.  31  Carlyle 
acknowledges  the  receipt  of  it.  Undoubtedly  this  treatise  suggested 
his  title. 

5  22.  Stillschweigen  und  Co^^^.  Silence  and  Co.  J.  U.  D., 
Juris  Utriusque  Doctor,  LL.D.  Up  to  May  27,  1833,  the  title 
was  "Thoughts  on  Clothes,  or  Life  and  Opinions  of  Herr  D. 
Teufelsdrockh,  D.U.J."     Cp.  9  23. 

5  23.  Weissnichtwo'sche  Anzeiger.  The  Utopian  Advertiser. 
Anzeiger  is  one  of  the  commonest  names  for  a  German  newspaper  ; 
e.g.,  Reichsanzeiger,  etc. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  II.]        EDITORIAL  DIFFICUL TIES.  283 

5  .^o.  work  —  interesting.  Part  of  Carlyle's  humor  is  to  praise 
his  own  work  in  this  insidious  way. 

6  11.     mochte  es.     May  it  flourish  also  on  l^ritish  soil ! 
613.     "whose  seed-field."     See  note  on  motto,  p.  275. 

6  16.     marked   with   chalk.      "  Cressa   ne   careat   pulchra   dies 
nota."     Horat,  Cartn.  ¥.  36.  10. 
6  17.     extensive  Volume.     See  5  24. 

6  20.  the  toughest  pearl-diver.  Cp.  Browning,  Paracelsus,  Pt.  I : 
end  : 

Two  points  in  the  adventure  of  a  diver, 

One  —  when,  a  beggar,  he  prepares  to  plunge, 

One  —  when,  a  prince,  he  rises  with  his  pearl  ? 

6  26.  new  human  Individuality.  This  is  Carlyle's  excuse  for 
introducing  Book  II,  which  is  Wotton  Reinfred  q.\h\.  into  slips. 

7  4.    a  proselytising  creature.     See  194  28,  n. 
7  27.     Fraser's  magazine.     See  Introd. 

7  28.  Waterloo-Crackers.  "  Fire-crackers "  of  a  special  size, 
made  to  celebrate  the  great  victory. 

7  32.  inexorably  shut.  Sartor  had  been  sent  to  Eraser  as  two 
magazine  articles  in  the  winter  of  1830  and  not  published. 

8  7.    to  revolve  them. 

With  downcast  looks  the  joyless  victor  sate. 
Revolving  in  his  altered  soul 
The  various  turns  of  chance  below. 

Alexander'' s  Feast,  11.  70-72. 

8  16.  Hofrath  Heuschrecke.  Privy-Councillor  Grasshopper.  See 
Introd.;  cp.  21  13,  n.  and  205  14,  n. 

8  28.  the  Family.  A  London  publication,  encyclopaedic  in 
character,  which  ran  from  1829  to  1842.  Coleridge,  Scott,  Southey, 
Lockhart  and  Milman  were  among  its  contributors.  See  Lett.,  159. 
—  the  National,  "which  did  not  extend  beyond  a  few  volumes, 
was  conducted  by  the  Rev.  G.  R.  Gleig,  and  published  by  Colburn 
and  Bentley.  Gait's  Life  of  Byroji  was  No.  i  ;  and  this  was  fol- 
lowed by  Gleig's  History  of  the  Bible.'"  A'octes  Amb.  Ill,  79,  note. 
1865. 

8  29.  "glory  of  British  Literature."  Ironic.  See  also  32  8. 
Carlyle's  opinion  of  these  publications  is  sufficiently  clear  from  the 
following  extract  :  "  Our  zeal  for  popularising,  again,  is  to  be  seen 
on  every  side  of  us.  To  say  nothing  of  our  Societies  for  the  LDiJff'ti- 
sion  of  useful  K7iowledge,  with  their  sixpenny  treatises,  really  very 


284  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  II. 

meritorious,  we  have  I  know  not  how  many  Miscellanies,  Family 
Libraries,  Cabinet  Cyclopcsdias,  and  so  forth  ;  and  these  not  man- 
aged by  any  literary  Gibeonites,  but  sometimes  by  the  best  men  we 
have  ;  Sir  Walter  Scott,  for  instance,  is  publishing  a  history  of 
Scotland  by  one  of  these  vehicles."     G.-Corr.,  169  f. 

8  34.  requisite  Documents.  '  Alle  nothige  Documente,'  is  a 
common  (German  legal  phrase,  which  figures  also  in  German  jokes. 

9  1.  chemical  mixture.  The  usual  form  of  the  experiment  is  to 
drop  a  single  crystal  into  a  supersaturated  solution  of  Glauber's  salts 
which  has  been  allowed  to  cool.  The  liquid  turns  to  crystals  at 
once.  The  idea  is  Goethean,  however.  On  the  news  of  Jerusalem's 
death  "  the  plan  of  IVerter  was  invented :  the  whole  shot  together 
from  all  sides,  and  became  a  solid  mass ;  as  the  water  in  the  vessel, 
which  already  stood  on  the  point  of  freezing,  is  by  the  slightest 
motion  changed  at  once  into  firm  ice."  Dichtting  ti.  Wahrheit, 
b.  iii,  s.  200-213,  quoted  by  Carlyle,  Essays,  Goethe,  I,  230,  written 
in  1828. 

9  13.  Oliver  Yorke.  The  pseudonym  assumed  by  Wilham 
Maginn  (17 94-1842),  as  editor  of  Eraser.  Cp.  Christopher  (or  Kit) 
North,  for  John  Wilson,  editor  of  Blackwood.  See  Bates,  Maclise 
Gallery,  40,  and  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.  for  account  of  his  life. 

9  17.     '  patriotic  libraries.'     See  8  29. 

9  22.  Sartor  Resartus.  Mr.  W.  Davenport  Adams,  in  his 
Dictionary  of  English  Literature,  asserts  that  the  title  is  taken  from 
a  Scotch  ballad,  The  Tailor  Patched,  but  no  authority  is  adduced, 
and  a  careful  search  by  Prof.  J.  T.  Hatfield,  Ph.D.,  through  a  large 
mass  of  ballad  literature,  and  by  myself  at  Harvard,  has  failed  to 
discover  any  such  ballad. 

9  23.     Life  and  Opinions.     See  5  22,  n. 

9  32.  the  paralysis  of  Cant.  Carlyle  owes  something  to  John- 
son's definition,  which  is  of  the  clearest.  See  Boswell's  Life,  sub 
ami..  May  15,  1783. 

BosWELL  :  "  Perhaps,  Sir,  I  should  be  the  less  happy  for  being  in 
Parliament.  I  never  would  sell  my  vote,  and  I  should  be  vexed  if 
things  went  wrong."  Johnson  :  "  That's  cant,  Sir.  It  would  not 
vex  you  more  in  the  house  than  in  the  gallery  :  public  affairs  vex  no 
man."  ..."  My  dear  friend,  clear  your  mind  of  cant.  You  may 
talk  as  other  people  do  :  you  may  say  to  a  man,  '  Sir,  I  am  your 
most  humble  servant.'  You  are  not  his  most  humble  servant.  .  .  . 
You  may  talk  in  this  manner  ;  it  is  a  mode  of  talking  in  society  : 
but  don't  think  foolishly." 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  III.]  REMINISCENCES.  285 

In  Wotton  Reinfred  the  same  note  had  been  sounded.  It  is  the 
key-note  to  much  of  Carlyle's  philosophy, 

"  I  profess  a  kind  of  enmity  to  cant,  wherever  I  may  find  it."  .  .  . 

"  After  all,"  said  Williams,  "cant  is  the  great  cosmetic  and  enamel 
of  existence,  the  cheap  and  sovereign  alchemy  for  making  crooked 
things  straight  and  rough  places  plain  ;  why  should  I  quarrel  with 
it,  I  that  need  it  so  much  myself,  nay,  so  many  times  am  forced  to 
use  it .'' "  .  .  . 

"Life  is  a  huge  tread-mill,  if  you  don't  step  forward  they  trample 
you  to  jelly,  and  if  you  do  step  forward  for  a  century,  you  are  exactly 
where  you  started.  Good  Cant !  Now  she  tells  us  this  is  a  journey 
towards  a  noble  goal  with  prospects  of  this  and  that  on  the  right 
hand  and  the  left  ;  it  is  a  journey  as  I  tell  you.  Long  life  to  Cant  ! 
if  it  were  not  she  {sic),  we  might  hang  and  drown  ourselves,  and  with 
her  one  can  live  in  surprising  comfort."     L.  W.  C,  117,  118,  119. 

10  2.  insignificant.  This  with  the  note  is  part  of  the  joke  of 
mystification.     See  Introd. 

10  4.     Whoso  hath  ears.     See  Matt.  xi.  1 5. 

10  14.     wear.     Usually  spelled  '  weir,'  dam. 

10  22.  nights  and  suppers.  "  O  noctes  coenaeque  deum,  quibus, 
etc."     Horace,  Satires  ii.  6.  65. 

10  22.     feast  of  reason. 

"  There  St.  John  mingles  with  my  friendly  bowl 
The  Feast  of  Reason  and  the  flow  of  Soul." 

Pope,  Imitations  of  Horace,  Satire  i.  127  f. 

10  27.  Amicus  Plato.  '' Amicus  Plato  —  my  father  would  say, 
construing  the  words  to  my  uncle  Toby,  as  he  went  along,  Atnicus 
Plato  ;  —  that  is,  Dinah  was  my  aunt  ;  —  sed  viagis  arnica  Veritas  — 
but  Truth  is  my  sister."  Tristram  Shandy,  vol.  I.  cap.  xxi.  Sterne 
most  probably  got  it  from  Cervantes.  See  Don  Quixote,  Pt.  II. 
cap.  li.  Erasmus  gives  the  Greek  form  of  the  saw  in  his  '  Adagia,' 
1643,  P-  4^»  co^-  2  :  'I'lXos  nXaroji'  dXXa  fiaWov  ij  aKrjdeia.  See  Azotes 
and  Queries,  3d  Sen,  VIII,  275.  219  ;   ist  Ser.,  III.  484.  468.  389. 

10  31.     Prince  of  Lies. 

The  prince  of  darkness  is  a  gentleman  : 
Modo  he's  called  and  Mahu. 

King  Lear,  iii.  4.  12S  f. 

11  1.  Puffery.  Cp.  100  26.  "In  like  manner  Colburn  and 
Bentley,  the  booksellers,  are  known  to  expend  ten  thousand  annu- 
ally on   what  they  call  advertising,  more   commonly  called  puffing_ 


286  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  III. 

Puffing  .  .  .  flourishes  in  all  countries  ;  but  London  is  the  true  scene 
of  it,  having  this  one  quality  beyond  all  other  cities  —  a  quite  im- 
measurable size.  It  is  rich  also,  stupid  and  ignorant  beyond  exam- 
ple ;  thus  in  all  respects  the  true  Goshen  of  quacks."  C.  E.  Z., 
II,  211.  "Now,  apart  from  the  subterranean  and  tartarean  regions 
of  Literature  :  —  leaving  out  of  view  the  frightful,  scandalous  statis- 
tics of  Puffing  — "  Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  27.  "Literature, 
too,  has  its  Paternoster-row  mechanism,  its  Trade-dinners,  its  Edito- 
rial conclaves,  and  huge  subterranean,  puffing  bellows."  Essays, 
Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  141. 

11  4.  no  cheating.  "A  merchant  with  them  is  considered  as 
the  lowest  character  in  the  country,  as  a  man  that  will  cheat  if  he 
can,  and  whose  trade  it  is  to  create  and  then  supply  artificial  wants." 
Borrow,  T7-avels  in  China,  180.  Lond.,  1806.  "The  inscriptions 
in  the  shops  are  sometimes  amusing.  .  .  .  We  have  seen  the  follow- 
ing—  'Gossiping  and  long  sitting  injure  business';  'Former  cus- 
tomers have  inspired  caution  —  no  credit  given';  .  .  .  'Goods 
genuine,  prices  true.'"  Davis,  China  and  the  Chinese,  II,  17  (The 
Family  Library). 

11  14.  Hegel.  G.  W.  F.  Hegel  (1770-1S31).  "To  the  end  he 
remains  a  self-seeking,  determined,  laborious,  critical,  unaffectionate 
man,  faithful  to  his  office  and  his  household,  loyal  to  his  employers, 
cruel  to  his  foes.  .  .  .  His  style  in. his  published  works  is  not 
without  its  deep  ingenuity,  and  its  marvelous  accuracy,  but  other- 
mse  it  is  notoriously  one  of  the  most  barbarous,  technical,  and 
obscure  in  the  whole  history  of  philosophy."  Royce,  Spirit  of 
Modern  Philosophy,  196.  —  Bardili.  Christoph  Gottfried  (1761- 
1808),  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  the  gymnasium  at  Stuttgart  from 
1795  ^"^  ^^^  death.  His  first  work,  Grundriss  der  ersten  Logik 
(Stuttgart,  1800),  was  a  severe  attack  on  Kant.  On  account  of  his 
obscurity  he  was  and  is  generally  neglected. 

"  Bardili's  Rational  Realism,  is  it  not  like  the  doctrine  of  Male- 
branche  ?  "     C.-foiir.,  49. 

11  16.  descend  .  ,  .  Forum.  'In  forum  descendere'  is  a 
Ciceronian  phrase  which  Carlyle  may  have  recollected.  He  was 
reading  Cicero  in  1S15.     See  E.  Lett.,  16. 

11  25.  Oken.  Lorenz  (1779-1851);  real  name,  Ockenfuss;  prom- 
inent naturalist ;  professor  "  extraordinary  "  of  Medicine  at  Jena  in 
1S07.  His  lectures  on  Natural  Philosophy  and  Comparative  Anato- 
my first  brought  him  into  notice.  In  1812  he  became  ordinary 
professor  of  natural  philosophy,  and  in  18 16  he  founded   his  ency- 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  III.]  REMINISCENCES.  287 

clopaedic  journal,  Isis,  which  he  edited  till  its  cessation  in  1848.  On 
account  of  its  boldness  in  attacking  various  abuses,  Isis  was  sup- 
pressed in  various  German  towns  and  the  editor  forced  to  resign  his 
professorship.  Oken's  greatest  achievement  is  his  attempt  to  prove 
that  nature  is  one. 

11  26.  Isis.  See  11  25,  n.  A  very  appropriate  journal  for  the 
expression  of  such  opinions  as  Teufelsdrockh  is  credited  with. 

12  6.  Gukguk.  Borrowed  from  Richter.  "  The  old  gentleman, 
who  in  Wittenberg,  had  toped  as  well  as  written,  and  thirsted  not 
more  for  the  Hippocrene  than  for  Gukguk."  Qiiinhts  Fixleht, 
C. -Trans.,  II,  106. 

12  7.  Zur  Griinen  Gans.  The  Green  Goose  Tavern,  the  name 
of  a  veritable  Lokal  in  Munich,  which  John  Carlyle  described  to  his 
brother,  after  his  first  visit  there  in  1827.  On  his  second  visit  in 
1835,  Carlyle  writes  :  "It  seems  to  me  you  ought  to  meet  Teufels- 
droeckh  in  some  of  the  Coffee-houses  of  Munich  !  Do  they  meet  in 
that  one  yet  and  drink  beer  }  "  Lett.,  554.  John  also  described  the 
lodging  and  watchtower  in  the  Wahngasse ;  see  ib.  555,  n. 

12  21.     Bleibt  doch.     But  he  is  a  thorough  joker  and  jail-bird. 

12  24.     Wo  steckt.     Where  is  the  rascal  hiding  ? 

12  30.     Under   those   thick  locks.      The   thought  is   repeated. 

28  7-15. 

13  6.  smoke  tobacco.  Scrap  of  a  famous  song  in  praise  of 
tobacco.  It  is  by  G.  Wither  and  appears  in  D'Urfey's  Pills  to 
Purge  Melancholy,  beginning, 

Tobacco's  but  an  Indian  weed ; 
Grows  green  at  morn,  cut  down  at  eve, 
It  shows  our  decay,  we  are  but  clay. 
Think  of  this  when  you  smoke  tobacco. 

Why  should  we  so  much  despise 
So  good  and  wholesome  an  exercise 
As  early  and  late,  to  meditate, 
Thus  think  and  smoke  tobacco. 

See  F.  W.  Fairholt,  Tobacco^  102  f.  Lond.,  1859.  Another  variant 
occurs  in  Hajidy  Andy.  Carlyle  as  a  devotee  of  the  weed  and  a 
Scot   would   know   the   song,   in    the   version    of    the    Rev.  Ralph 

Erskine  : 

This  Indian  weed,  now  withered  quite, 

Tho'  green  at  noon,  cut  down  at  night, 

Shows  thy  decay, 

All  flesh  is  hay  : 

Thus  think  and  smoke  tobacco. 


288  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  III. 

13  10.  in  petto.  Literally,  'within  the  breast,'  'in  reserve,'  'in 
secret.'  A  phrase  used  of  a  candidate  for  the  Popedom  not  openly 
declared  by  the  College  of  Cardinals.  "  Fraulein  Libussa  was  un- 
doubtedly the  favoured  candidate,  at  least  /;/  petto,  of  the  sage  Elec- 
tors": Libussa,  C.-Trans.,  I,  77. 

1'3  11.  were.  Fraser  and  all  subsequent  editions  have  'was' 
uncorrected. 

13  13.  Sans-culottism.  From  Fr. '  vSans-culotte,'  tatterdemalion, 
more  picturesque  than  the  tamer  term.  Radicalism.  Not  Carlyle's 
own  coinage ;  Goethe  had  used  the  term  '  Literarischer  Sansciilot- 
tismus '  in  a  review  as  early  as  1795.  ^^^  Sdmmt.  Werke,  XIII, 
396.     Stuttgart,  1873. 

"  It  is  in  these  places,  in  these  mouths,  that  the  epithet  Sans- 
culotte first  gets  applied  to  indigent  Patriotism  ;  in  the  last  age  we 
had  Gilbert  Sans-culotte,  the  indigent  poet.  Destitute-of-Breeches;  a 
mournful  Destitution;  which,  however,  if  twenty  millions  share  it, 
may  become  more  effective  than  most  possessions."  French  Revo- 
littion.  The  Constitution,  Bk.  III.  cap.  iv.  The  places  are  the 
"  cafe  de  Valois  and  at  Meot  the  Restaurateur's  "  ;  the  '  mouths  ' 
are  those  of  aggressive  Royalists  at  Paris  in  1792.  "  Un  jour  que 
les  femmes  qui  occupaient  les  tribunes  de  la  Constituante  etaient 
encore  plus  bruyantes  que  de  coutume,  I'abbe  Maury  dit  au  presi- 
dent :  Monsieur  le  president,  faites  taire  ce  tas  de  sans-culottes." 
Littre,  Supple.;  cp.  Buchman,  Geflilg.  IVorte,  p.  387.     17th  ed. 

14  2.     Melchizedek.     See  Gen.  xiv.  17-24  and  Heb.  viii.  1-3. 
14  5.     vivid  way.     One  of  Carlyle's  own  gifts. 

14  7.  Wandering  Jew.  The  legend  is  that  Christ  bearing  his 
cross  on  the  way  to.  Calvary  asked  leave  to  rest  at  the  stall  of  a 
shoemaker,  who  struck  him  and  bade  him  pass  on.  Christ  replied, 
"  Thou  shalt  pass  on  forever."  The  man  never  died,  cannot  die, 
and  must  traverse  the  earth  till  the  Judgment  Day.  Cp.  Percy's 
Reliqtics,  Ahasiieriis  and  Pseiidodoxia  Epidemica,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  xvii  ; 
for  modern  treatment,  Eugene  Sue,  Le  Juif  Errant ;  for  popular 
discussion,  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

14  12.  AUgemeine  Zeitung.  Universal  Journal.  '  Zeitung,' 
newspaper,  is  part  of  the  title  of  many  German  periodicals. 

14  23.  reflect  light  and  resist  pressure.  Fag-end  of  physical 
definition. 

14  33.  Program.  The  outline  or  abstract  of  courses  in  a  Ger- 
man school  or  university,  usually  accompanied  by  an  original  paper 
or  address. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  III.]  REMINISCENCES.  289 

15  3.  bodying  .  .  .  forth.  Phrase  often  used  by  Carlyle.  Cp. 
197  24,  203  24. 

—  And  as  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown, — 

Midsiiinmer  Nights  Dream,  v.  i. 

15  9.  recommended.  Supposititious  quotation  from  the  '  Pro- 
gram,' 14  33.  But  on  Jan.  17,  1828,  Carlyle  wrote  to  Goethe  for  a 
testimonial  to  help  him  to  the  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  vSt. 
Andrews,  and  Goethe  sent  him  a  most  flattering  one.  See  G.-Corr., 
63-81  ;  C.  E.  L.,  I,  434. 

15  20.  hold  his  peace.  Bekker  was  called  "den  Stummen  in 
sieben  Sprachen."  See  Goethe's  Correspondence  with  Zelter,  March 
15,  1830. 

15  23.  wonder  —  nine  days.  "  I  was  seven  of  the  nine  days  out 
of  the  wonder  before  you  came."     As  You  Like  It,  iii.  2.  151. 

16  9.    not  more  interested.     Cp.  19  30  ;  28  1  ff ;  214  2. 

16  24.     Wahngasse.     Fancy-lane,  Dream-alley.     See  12  7,  n. 
16  25.     pinnacle.     An  allusion    to    the   high    tower   of   Herod's 
Temple  of  Jerusalem.     See  Luke  iv.  9 ;  cp.  214  15. 
16  29.     Airts.      Points  of  the  compass  ;  quarters. 

Of  a'  the  airts  the  wind  can  blaw, 

I  dearly  like  the  west, 
For  there  the  bonnie  lassie  lives,  — 

Burns,  /  Loz'e  my  lean. 

16  33.  speculum.  Carlyle  has  tripped  here  in  his  Latin.  'Spe- 
culum '  is  mirror,  watch-tower  is  '  specula.'  In  his  review  of  Scott 
he  misunderstands  '  publicanus.'  See  R.  H.  Hutton,  Essays  on 
Some  of  the  Modern  Gtiides  to  English  Thojight  in  Matters  of  Faith, 
p.  40  f.,  London,  1891;  and  E.  Lett.,  116,  n.  The  germ  of  this 
famous  passage  seems  to  have  come  from  Burton's  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy,  which  Carlyle  read  in  1S26.  "Greater  preferment  as  I 
could  never  get,  so  am  I  not  in  debt  for  it.  I  have  a  competence 
{latis  Deo)  from  my  noble  and  munificent  patrons,  though  I  live  still 
a  collegiate  student,  as  Democritus  in  his  garden,  and  lead  a  monas- 
tic life,  ipse  mihi  theatrti??:,  sequestered  from  those  tumults  and 
troubles  of  the  world,  Et  tanqiiam  in  specula  positus,  (as  he  said)  in 
some  high  place  above  you  all,  like  Stoicus  Sapiens,  omnia  saecnla, 
praeterita  praesentiaque  videns,  uno  vcliit  inttiitu,  I  hear  and  see 
what  is  done  abroad,  how  others  run,  ride,  turmoil,  and  macerate 
themselves  in  court  and  country,  far  from  those  wrangling  lawsuits, 
ajtlae  vanitatem,  fori  afnbitionem,  rideo  mccwji  soleo:    I  laugh  at  all, 


290  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  III. 

only  secure  lest  my  suit  go  amiss,  my  ships  perish,  corn  and  cattle 
miscarry,  trade  decay,  I  have  no  wife  nor  children  good  or  bad  to 
provide  for.  A  mere  spectator  of  other  men's  fortunes  and  adven- 
tures, and  how  they  act  their  parts  which  one  thinks  are  diversely 
presented  unto  me,  as  from  a  common  theatre  or  scene."  Democri- 
tus  to  the  Reader. 

17  7.     choking  by  sulphur.     The  old-fashioned  way  of  obtaining 
honey  was  to  kill  the  entire  swarm  in  the  autumn  with  the  fumes  of 

sulphur. 

Ah  !  see  where,  robbed  and  murdered  in  that  pit 
Lies  the  still  heaving  hive  ;  at  evening  snatched, 
Beneath  the  cloud  of  guilt-concealing  night, 
And  fixed  o'er  sulphur. 

Thomson,  Autumn,  11 72  ff. 

17  13.     Schlosskirche,     Castle  chapel. 

17  14.     Couriers  arrive.     Apparently  Carlyle  had  Cowper's  lines 
in  his  mind. 

He  comes  the  herald  of  a  noisy  world, 

With  spatter'd  boots,  strapp'd  waist  and  frozen  locks  ; 


messenger  of  grief 

Perhaps  to  thousands  and  of  joy  to  some. 

The  Task,  Bk.  IV.  1.  5  ff. 

17  15.  there,  topladen.  "  But  observe,  also,  on  beaten  highways, 
how  dust  on  dust,  in  long  cloudy  trains,  mounts  up,  betokening  the 
track  of  commodious  top-laden  carriages,  in  which  the  rich,  the 
noble,  and  many  others  are  whirled  along."  Carlyle,  Meister's 
Travels,  cap.  Last. 

17  25.     Aus  der  Ewigkeit.     Cp.  242  25,  n. 

17  26.  these  are  Apparitions.  This  thought  is  expanded  nobly 
in  "Natural  Supernaturalism,"  Bk.  III.  cap.  viii.  Of  his  sister 
Margaret,  who  died  June  22,  1830,  Carlyle  wrote,  Jan.  1831,  ^'■We 
are  spirits  as  well  as  she,  and  God  is  round  us  and  in  us,  Here  as 
well  as  Yonder."     Lett.,  187. 

17  29.  Their  solid  pavement.  According  to  Carlyle's  meta- 
physics, which  are  Berkeleyan,  all  one  knows  of  the  pavement  on 
which  he  treads  is  sensation  Avithin  himself ;  sensation  of  color, 
sensation  of  touch,  nothing  more.     See  48  14,  n. 

17  32.  Clothes-screen.  A  soldier  apparently.  Carlyle's  word 
for  a  mere  wearer  of  gorgeous  clothes.     Cp.  35  21,  49  18. 

18  1.  Hengst  and  Horsa,  The  leaders  of  the  English  invaders 
of  Britain  in  the  Fifth  Century.     See  Bade,  Ecc.  Hist.,  cap.  xv. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  III.]  REMINISCENCES.  291 

18  9.  ancient  reign  of  Night.  Refers  to  Paradise  Lost,  bk. 
ii.  1.  961  ff.,  particularly  11.  970,  986,  1002.  Cp.  Faerie  Qiceen,  i.  5,  22. 
The  idea  comes  from  Hesiod.  See  Cudworth,  Intellectical  System, 
I,  402-407.     Lond.,  1845. 

18  32.  The  Lover  whispers.  In  the  beginning  of  this  century 
there  were  many  runaway  matches.  The  eloping  couples  escaped 
the  stricter  English  marriage  laws  by  posting  to  Gretna  Green,  just 
across  the  Scotch  border. 

19  10.  Rabenstein.  The  raven-stone,  the  gallows.  It  forms  the 
centre  of  a  most  impressive  scene  in  Goethe's  Faust. 

19  11.  two-legged  animals.  "  He  (Diogenes)  heard  people 
approve  the  definition  which  Plato  gave  of  man,  which  he  called  a 
two-legged  animal  without  feathers.  This  suggested  to  him  the 
idea  of  taking  a  cock  which  he  plucked,  and  then  carried  to  the 
school  of  Plato,  saying,  '  Here  is  Plato's  man.'  "  Diogenes  Laertius, 
bk.  vi. 

19  24.     I  am  alone.     Cp.  140  8  and  n. 

19  27.  Night-thoughts.  Allusion  to  The  Complaint  or  Night- 
Thoughts,  a  religious  poem  in  blank  verse,  by  the  Rev.  Edward 
Young  (1681-1765).  Many  of  its  lines  have  become  common  quota- 
tions. Carlyle  uses  the  phrase  in  the  same  way  in  The  French 
Revolution.     The  Guillotine,  bk.  i.  cap.  v. 

20  5.  'united  in  a  common  element.'  The  passage  is  imitated 
from  Goethe's  description  of  Mariana's  housekeeping.  "  Music, 
portions  of  plays  and  pairs  of  shoes,  washes  and  Italian  flowers, 
pin-cushions,  hair-skewers,  rouge-pots  and  ribbons,  books  and  straw- 
hats  ;  no  article  despised  the  neighborhood  of  another  ;  all  were 
united  by  a  common  element,  powder  and  dust."  Aleister^s  Appren- 
ticeship, bk.  i.  cap.  XV ;  see  12  7,  n. 

21  13.  they  never  appear.  Chambers's  Cyclopaedia  bears  uncon- 
scious witness  to  the  importance  of  this  badge  of  respectability. 
"  Instead  of  effeminacy,  it  is  considered  now  a  sign  of  poverty  or 
improvidence  not  to  be  possessed  of  one."  Art.  Umbrella.  In 
Poole's  farce,  "  Paul  Pry,"  which  was  very  popular  in  1826  and 
thereabouts,  the  eponymous  hero  and  his  umbrella  are  inseparable. 
The  typical  respectable  nonentity  seems  familiarly  English  rather 
than  German. 

21  14.  little  wisdom.  Attributed  to  Axel  Oxenstiern  (1583- 
1654),  the  Swedish  statesman.  "An  nescis,  mi  fili,  quantilla  pruden- 
tia  mundus  regatur  .''  "  His  son  had  hesitated  to  accept  the  headship 
of  a  Swedish  embassy,  on  the  ground  of  his  youth. 


292  ^^'<^  ^^^i-S".  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  1 1 J . 

21  25.     confusion  worse  confounded. 

I  saw  and  lieard,  for  such  a  numerous  host 
Fled  not  in  silence  through  the  frighted  deep 
With  rum  upon  ruin,  rout  on  rout. 
Confusion  worse  confounded  ; 

Par.  Lost,  ii.  993  ff. 

21  27.  the  very  Spirit.  From  Carlyle's  own  index-reference  to 
205  14  it  would  appear  that  Heuschrecke  is  Malthus  himself.  In 
this  light   the  intention  of  the  quotation  is  highly  ironical. 

21  31.  burin.  The  chief  tool  of  the  wood-engraver.  Carlyle 
shows  here  that  he  is  conscious  of  his  own  peculiar  excellence,  — 
literary  portraiture.  See  his  pen-pictures  of  Coleridge,  Lamb  and 
Wordsworth  in  his  Reminiscences. 

22  10.  fondness  of  a  Boswell.  "  It  was  impossible  that  there 
should  be  perfect  harmony  between  two  such  companions.  Indeed 
the  great  man  was  sometimes  provoked  into  fits  of  passion,  in  which 
he  said  things  w^hich  the  small  man,  during  a  few  hours,  seriously 
resented.  Every  quarrel,  however,  was  soon  made  up.  During 
twenty  years  the  disciple  continued  to  worship  the  master  :  the 
master  continued  to  scold  the  disciple,  to  sneer  at  him,  and  to  love 
him."  Macaulay,  Sannicl  Johnson.  See  also  Carlyle's  essay  on 
Johnson. 

22  29.  Dalai-Lama.  The  Grand  Lama,  Buddhist  human-god  of 
Thibet.  "  If  the  Lama  doctor  happens  not  to  have  any  medicine 
with  him,  he  is  by  no  means  disconcerted  ;  he  writes  the  names 
of  the  remedies  upon  little  scraps  of  paper,  moistens  the  paper 
with  his  saliva,  and  rolls  them  up  into  pills,  which  the  patient 
tosses  down  with  the  same  perfect  confidence  as  if  they  were 
genuine  medicaments."  Hue,  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet  and  China, 
translated  by  W.  Ilazlitt,  I,  d"],  3d  ed.    London. 

22  32.     Talapoin.     Monk  in  a  Buddhist  monastery. 

23  5.    outwatching  the  Bear. 

Or  let  my  lamp  at  midnight  hour 
Be  seen  in  some  high  lonely  tow'r 
Where  I  may  oft  outwatch  the  Bear. 

Milton,  Tl  Pe7iseroso,   1.  85  ff. 

"  As  the  Bear  never  sets,  he  could  only  outwatch  him  by  sitting 
up  till  daybreak."     (Keightley.) 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  IV.J  CHARACTERISTICS.  293 

23  18.     Documents.     See  8  34. 

23  23.  Bag  of  Doubloons.  The  preface  to  Gil  Bias  tells  of  two 
students  on  their  travels  findhig  a  stone  with  this  inscription,  "  Here 
lies  interred  the  soul  of  the  licentiate  Peter  Garcias."  The  one 
enjoyed  the  jest  and  went  his  way;  but  the  other  dug  up  the  stone 
and  found  underneath  a  purse  of  a  hundred  ducats,  with  a  note 
appointing  the  lucky  finder  the  whimsical  Hcentiate's  heir. 

"  Such  things  are  in  themselves  mere  words  but,  like  the  Spanish 
licentiate's  epitaph,  they  are  the  clue  to  the  soul  that  lies  buried ; 
and  he  who  digs  for  it  judiciously  will,  like  the  sagacious  student, 
not  fail  of  his  reward."  R.  Gaxneii,  Philological  Essays,  p.  113, 
Lond.,  1859. 

24  7.     Weissnichtwo'sche  Anzeiger.     See  5  23  and  n. 
24  31.     Pontiff.     See  70  30,  n. 

24  32.  a  whole  immensity.  Before  the  days  of  Ruskin  and 
William  Morris.  As  Mr.  Lang  would  say,  'Elegance  of  taste  and 
fastidious  research  of  ornament  could  do  no  more.' 

25  5.  star  of  a  Lord.  Part  of  the  insignia  of  such  orders  as  the 
Bath,  the  Garter,  etc.,  is  a  jewel  in  the  shape  of  si  star.  'Lord'  is 
not  a  rank  but  a  title  given  to  those  who  are  noble  by  birth  or 
creation. 

25  19.  humour  of  looking.  See  bk.  iii.  cap.  viii.  for  full 
development  of  this  idea. 

25  30.  In  our  wild  Seer.  This  passage  shows  a  tendency  in 
Carlyle  to  praise  his  own  work.     Cp.  26  29  ff.  and  passim. 

25  31.     locusts  and  wild  honey.     See  Matt.  iii.  1-6. 

26  15.  Sanchoniathon.  This  catalogue  reminds  one  profanely 
of  the  ingenious  Mr.  Ephraim  Jenkinson  citing,  "  Sanchoniathon, 
Manetho,  Berosus  and  Ocellus  Lucanus "  on  the  "cosmogony  or 
creation  of  the  world  "  to  Dr.  Primrose  of  Wakefield.  Sanchonia- 
thon ("  the  god  Sakkun  hath  given "),  the  name  of  the  pretended 
author  of  the  Phoenician  writings,  said  to  have  been  used  by  Philo 
Byblius,  author  of  a  Phoenician  history,  part  of  which  is  preserved 
in  Eusebius. 

26  16.  Dr.  Lingard  (i 77 i-i 851).  The  reference  is  to  his  An- 
tiquities of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church  (18 19)  and  his  History  of 
England  (1830).  —  Shasters  (^'^j/r«,  a  book).  The  authoritative 
religious  and  legal  books  of  the  Hindus.  —  Talmuds.  The  Talmud 
{lamad,  to  learn),  is  the  fundamental  code  of  the  Jewish  civil  and 
canonical  law. 

26  17.     Korans  {karaa,   to   read).     The  sacred  book  of  the  Ma- 


294  NOTES.  IHk.  I.Cap.  IV. 

hometans,  *'  which  forms  the  religious,  social,  civil,  commercial, 
military  and  legal  code  of  Islam."  —  Cassini.  Jacques,  second  of  a 
famous  family  of  French  astronomers  (1677-1756).  His  Astt'onomi- 
cal  Tables  were  published  in  1740. 

26  \^.  M^canique  Celeste.  See  1  16,  n.  —  Belfast  Town  and 
Country  Almanack.  Still  published.  In  a  letter  to  Robert  Mitchell 
of  August  3,  1816,  Carlyle  mentions  having  consulted  this  almanac 
for  the  tides,  in  order  to  arrange  an  excursion  from  Annan  to  Cum- 
berland with  his  friend.     E.  Lett.  39;  cp.  ib.  257. 

26  31.  full-formed  Minervas.  The  legend  is  really  of  Athena, 
not  Minerva.     See  Plesiod,  77/<?(7^'-.,  1144-48.     Valpy. 

27  26.     Gleams  of  an  ethereal  Love.     See  171  15. 

28  3.  Mephistopheles.  The  tempter  and  mocker  in  the  Faust 
legend.  The  allusion  is  to  Goethe's  drama,  which  had  not  yet  been 
popularized  by  opera  and  adaptation.  See  Essays,  Goethe's  Helena, 
I,  163. 

28  7.    as  we  mentioned.     See  12  30. 

28  21.  Seven  Sleepers.  The  legend  is  that  seven  Christian 
youths  of  Ephesus,  fleeing  from  the  Decian  persecution,  took  refuge 
in  a  cave  and  then  fell  asleep  for  three  hundred  and  sixty  years.  See 
Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  John  Koch,  Die 
Siebensch  ldfer-lege?i  de. 

28  21-25.  Jean  Paul's  doing.  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter, 
German  humorist  (1763-1S25).  See  Carlyle's  essay,  Edinburgh 
Review,  No.  91,  1827.  —  The  large-bodied  Poet.  Carlyle  calls  him 
"  A  huge,  irregular  man,  both  in  mind  and  person  .  .  .  full  of  fire, 
strength  and  impetuosity."  Essays,  I,  11.  For  Carlyle's  obligations 
to  him,  see  Introd. 

28  28.  Extra  harangues.  One  of  Richter's  whims  is  to  interpo- 
late a  chapter  which  he  calls  "  Extra-blatt,"  after  the  manner  of 
Swift's  "  digressions  "  in  "  A  Tale  of  a  Tub."  I  have  been  unable 
to  discover  any  such  'proposal'  as  is  mentioned  here,  in  Richter. 

28  32.  radiant,  ever-young  Apollo.  This  describes  the  laugh 
of  Walter  Welsh,  Mrs.  Carlyle's  maternal  grandfather.  "  He  had 
the  prettiest  laugh  (once  or  at  most  twice,  in  my  presence)  that  I  can 
remember  to  have  heard,  —  not  the  loudest,  my  own  Father's  still 
rarer  laugh  was  louder  far,  though  perhaps  not  more  complete  ;  but 
his  was  all  of  artillery-thunder,  feit  de  joie  from  all  guns  as  the  main 
element ;  while  in  Walter's  there  was  audible  something  as  of  infinite 
flutes  and  harps,  as  if  the  vanquished  themselves  were  invited  (or 
compelled)  to  partake  in  the  triumph.     I  remember  one  such  laugh 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  v.]         THE    WORLD   IN   CLOTHES.  295 

(quite  forget  aliout  what),  and  how  the  old  face  looked  suddenly  so 
beautiful  and  young  again.  '  Radiant,  ever-young  Apollo,'  etc.,  of 
Teufelsdrockh's  laugh  is  a  reminiscence  of  that."     Rem.,  I,  153. 

28  34.  Tattersall's.  A  famous  long-established  horse-market 
and  stable  in  London. 

29  8.     Richter.     See  28  21-25,  n. 
29  20.    fit  for  treasons. 

The  man  that  hath  not  music  in  himself, 

Nor  is  not  moved  with  concord  of  sweet  sounds, 

Is  fit  for  treasons,  stratagems  and  spoils. 

MercJiant  of  Venice,  v.  i,  83  ff. 

29  25.  total  want  of  arrangement.  Carlyle's  device  to  forestall 
criticism  of  the  apparent  confusion  in  the  plan  of  Sartor. 

30  10.  Montesquieu.  Charles  de  Secondat,  Baron  de  la  Brede 
et  de  Montesquieu  (1689-1755),  celebrated  French  writer  on  politics 
and  law;  author  oi  Lettres  Persanes  (1721),  Considh'atioiis  stir  les 
Causes  de  la  Grandeur  des  Romains  et  de  letir  Decadence  (1734), 
Esprit  des  Lois  (1734).  Carlyle  wrote  a  life  of  Montesquieu  for 
Brewster's  Edinburgh  Encyclopaedia.  See  E.Lett.,  132,  135,  144. — 
Spirit  of  Laws.  The  most  popular  and  original  book  ever  pub- 
lished on  the  subject  of  law.  Twenty-two  editions  were  exhausted  in 
two  years.  "The  Spirit  of  Laws  was  published  in  1748,  with  a 
truly  prodigious  effect.  It  coloured  the  whole  of  the  social  litera- 
ture in  France  during  the  rest  of  the  century."  J.  Morley,  Rousseau, 
I,  189.     Lond.,  1873. 

30  12.  Esprit  de  Coutumes.  Pun.  Coutume  means  law.  We 
have  in  Quebec  the  old  code  called  the  Coutume  de  Paris.  '  Cou- 
tume '  and  '  costume  '  are  forms  of  the  same  word.  See  Littre, 
Costume ;  cp.  202  20. 

31  1.  Anglo-Dandiacal.  Carlyle's  coinage;  "pertaining  to  the 
English  dandy."  "  I  say  in  spite  of  all  Dandiacal  Philosophers,  and 
Outer-house  Sages,  this  is,  was  and  forever  will  be  True!"  Lett.y 
201  ;  cp.  C.E.  L.,  II,  181,  236,  and,bk.  iii.  cap.  yi.,  passim. 

31  2-3.  drab  .  .  .  scarlet.  The  colors  are  not  chosen  at  ran- 
dom. The  Quakers  who  abhor  war  dress  in  drab  ;  while  for  nearly 
three  centuries  the  British  soldier's  uniform  has  been  red. 

31  17.     nay,  what  is.     For  variation  of  same  thought  cp.  234  21. 

32  4.  Library  .  .  .  useful  Knowledge.  The  title  of  The  Society 
for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge  was  sometimes  modified  by 
its  enemies,   ''for  the  Confusion  of  Useless  Knowledge."      Such 


296  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  V. 

methods  of  popularizing  knowledge  were  distrusted  by  Carlyle. 
See  following  note. 

32  8.     *at  present.'     See  8  29,  n. 

32  13.  cabalistico-sartorial.  Carlyle's  coinage.  Not  in  the 
dictionaries.  Equivalent  (perhaps)  to  "  mysteriously-relating-to-the- 
tailor's-art,"  or  "  pertaining-to-the-sacred-mysteries-of-tailordom." 

32  16.     Lilis.     Or  Lilith. 

Not  a  drop  of  her  blood  was  human, 

But  she  was  made  like  a  soft,  sweet  woman. 

D.  G.  RossETTi,  Eden  Bower. 

"  Adam  is  fabled  by  the  Talmudists  to  have  had  a  wife  before 
Eve  ;  she  was  called  Lilith,  and  their  progeny  was  all  manner  of 
aquatic  and  aerial  —  devils. —  Burton."  /ourua/,  Dec.  7,  1826. 
C.  E.  L.,  I,  385  ;  cp.  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  Part.  I,  Sec.  2,  Mem.  i, 
Subs.  2;  Faust,  Walpiirgisnacht. 

32  21.  Adam-Kadmon.  The  Chaldaic  name  for  the  book  of 
Genesis  is  "b'  Cadmin,"  in  the  beginning,  or  "  Cadmon,"  begin- 
ning, from  the  opening  words  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 
Adam-Cadmon  is  the  primitive  and  ideal  man  of  the  Cabalists. 
"  Der  Urmensch  ist  das  Prototyp  der  ganzen  Schopfung,  der  Inbe- 
griff  aller  Wesen,  der  Makrokosmus,  die  Ewige  Weisheit  ;  er  ist 
dasjenige,  was  von  Andern  Logos  oder  Wort  genannt  wdrd."  A.lbert 
Stockl,  Gesch.  der  Philos.  des  Mittelalters,  II,  235.     Mainz,  1865. 

32  22.  Nifl  and  MuspeL  "  Before  the  world  itself,  in  the  begin- 
ning, its  foundation  existed.  .  .  .  The  existing  things  were  cold 
and  heat,  ice  and  light.  Towards  the  north  lay  Niflheim,  towards 
the  south  Muspellheim.  Niflheim  (from  nifl,  Ger.  Nebel,  Lat. 
nebula,  Gr.  pecpeXr])  signifies  the  home  or  world  of  mist  .  .  .  Mus- 
pellheim, it  may  be  supposed,  betokened  (in  contradistinction  to 
Niflheim)  the  world  of  light,  warjuth,  fire."  Muspel  occurs  in 
O.  Sax.;  cp.  Heliand,  passim,  and  O.  H.  G.  fragment  on  Doomsday, 
Muspilli.     Thorpe,  Northern  Mythology,  I,  138.     Loud.,  1851. 

32  29.     Babel.     See  Gen.  xi.  1-9. 

32  30.  habilable.  That  can  wear  clothes.  Characteristic  jingle 
and  pun. 

32  34.  Orbis  pictus.  A  book  printed  by  the  educational  reformer, 
Comenius  (i 592-1671),  at  Niirnberg,  in  1657,  containing  pictures, 
names  and  descriptions  of  the  affairs  of  life.  Goethe  mentions  it 
as  one  of  the  books  permitted  to  him,  as  a  child  ;  so  does  Richter. 
Orbis  Vestitus  translates  the  title   of  this  chapter.     "  A  whole  orbis 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  v.]  THE   WORLD  IN  CLOTHES.  297 

pictus  or  ficius  of  Niirnberg  puppets."     Quintus  Fixleiii.     C.-Tians., 
II,  212. 

33  5.  Hoard  of  King  Nibelung.  Carlyle  reviewed  Simrock's 
translation  of  the  Middle  High  German  epic,  the  Nibehingeiilied,  in 
The  Westniinster  Review,  No.  29,  1831.  He  had  read  th^  work 
during  the  previous  summer.  See  Lett.,  164.  Here  he  is  quoting 
from  memory  and  makes  an  unimportant  slip.  The  passage  referred 
to  is  in  the  Nineteenth  Abenteuer,  and  runs  thus  in  Simrock  (p.  183. 
Stuttgart,  1885)  : 

Nun  mogt  ihr  von  dem  Horte      VVunder  horen  sagen  : 
Zwolf  Leiterwagen  konnten      ihn  kaum  von  dannen  tragen 
In  vier  Tag  und  Nachten      aus  des  Berges  Schacht, 
Hatten  sie  des  Tages      den  Weg  auch  dreimal  gemacht. 

Four  days,  not  twelve.    He  translates  the  passage  correctly;   Essays, 
11,312. 

33  Ji.  Gallia  Braccata.  "Gallia  Narbonensis  was  called  Brac- 
cata,  on  account  of  the  peculiar  covering  of  the  inhabitants  for  ^.heir 
thighs."  Lejupriere.  "  Narbonensis  provincia  appellatur  pars  Gallia- 
rum  quae  interno  mari  adluitur,  Braccata  antea  dicta."  Pliny,  Nat. 
Hist.,  iii.  4(5). 

33  13.  Kilmarnock  nightcap.  A  knitted  woolen  cap  worn  in 
Scotland,  varying  slightly  from  the  usual  "  bonnet." 

34  8-9.  Decoration  .  .  .  barbarous  classes.  Matthew  Arnold 
has  termed  the  British  aristocracy  barbarians,  and  this  may  refer  to 
their  love  of  titles,  orders,  "  decorations." 

34  16.  Out  of  the  eater.  The  riddle  of  Samson.  See  Judges 
xiv.  14. 

34  24.  Banyan-grove.  Beneficently  or  harmfully.  The  banyan 
is  a  i-apidly  growing  shade-tree  in  hot  countries  :  the  branches  grow 
down  and  strike  root  in  the  ground.  "  Great  actions  are  some- 
times historically  barren  ;  smallest  actions  have  taken  root  in  the 
moral  soil  and  grown  like  Banian  forests  to  cover  whole  quarters  of 
the  world."     C.-Jotir.,  Sept.  8,  1830  ;   C  E.  L.,  II,  91. 

34  26.  device  of  movable  Types.  Carlyle  had  contrasted  these 
two  things  before.  "  When  Tamerlane  had  finished  building  his 
pyramid  of  seventy  thousand  human  skulls,  and  was  seen  '  standing 
at  the  gate  of  Damascus,  glittering  in  steel,  with  his  battle-axe  on 
his  shoulder,'  till  his  fierce  hosts  filed  out  to  new  victories  and  new 
carnage,  the  pale  onlooker  might  have  fancied  that  Nature  was  in 
her  death-throes  ;  for  havoc  and  despair  had  taken  possession  of  the 
earth,  the  sun  of  manhood  seemed  setting  in  seas  of  blood.     Yet,  it 


298  NOTES.  [Hk.  I,  Cap.  V. 

might  be,  on  that  very  gala-day  of  Tamerlane,  a  little  boy  was  play- 
ing nine-pins  on  the  streets  of  Mentz,  whose  history  was  more 
important  to  men  than  that  of  twenty  Tamerlanes.  The  Tartar 
Khan,  with  his  shaggy  demons  of  the  wilderness,  '  passed  away  like 
a  whirlwind,'  to  be  forgotten  forever  ;  and  that  German  artisan  has 
wrought  a  benefit,  which  is  yet  immeasurably  expanding  itself,  and 
will  continue  to  expand  itself,  through  all  countries  and  through 
all  times.  What  are  the  conquests  and  expeditions  of  the  whole 
corporation  of  captains,  from  Walter  the  Penniless  to  Napoleon 
Bonaparte,  compared  with  these  '  movable  types '  of  Johannes 
Faust  ?  "     Essays,  Voltaire,  II,  8  f. 

34  31.  Monk  Schwartz's  pestle.  "  All  Histories  do  agree  in 
this,  that  a  German  was  the  Author  of  this  Invention,  but  whether 
his  Name  be  known,  or  whether  he  was  a  Monk  of  Eribu?-g,  Constan- 
tine  Aiicklitzen  or  Bertholdus  Swartz  (as  some  call  him),  a  Alojias- 
tick  too,  is  not  so  very  certain.  'T  is  said  he  was  a  Chymist,  who 
sometimes  for  Medicines  kept  Powder  of  Sulphur  in  a  Mortar,  which 
he  covered  with  a  Stone.  But  it  happened  one  day  as  he  was 
striking  Plre,  that  a  Spark  accidentally  falling  into  it,  brake  out  into 
a  Flame,  and  heav'd  up  the  Stone.  The  man  being  instructed  by 
this  Contingency,  and  having  made  an  Iron  Pipe  or  Tube  together 
with  Powder,  is  said  to  have  invented  this  Engine."  Pancirolli 
Rerum  Mirabilmm  Libri  Duo  (Lond.,  1785,  p.  384).  A.  W.  Wright, 
Bacon's  Advancement  of  Learnitig,  p.  305.     Clar.  Press,  1S80. 

35  4.  Pecunia.  Cp.  Skeat,  Etym.  Diet.,  Pecuniary.  "  The  bar- 
barous times  of  trade  by  barter,  when  the  Romans,  instead  of  figured 
cattle  on  their  leather  money,  drove  forth  the  beeves  themselves." 
Quint2is  Eixlcin,  C. -Trans.,  II,  128. 

35  23.  Tool-using  Animal.  Cf.  91  1.  "  Franklin  I  find  twice  or 
thrice  in  Boswell,  defines  man  as  a  Tool-making  Animal.  Teufels- 
dreck  therefore  has  so  far  been  anticipated.  Vivant  qui  ante  nos 
nostra  dixernnt.'"  C.-Jour.,  Jan.  1832.  See  Boswell's  Johnson,  st{b 
ann.,  Apr.  7,  1778. 

36  7.    Laughing  Animal. 

'T  was  said  of  old,  deny  it  who  can, 
The  only  laughing  animal  is  man. 

W.  Whitehead,  On  Ridicule  (1743). 

"  If  the  old  definition  be  true,"  said  he,  "  that  risibility  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  of  a  rational  animal,  the  English  are  the 
most  distinguished  for  rationality  of  any  people  I  know."  Humphrey 
Clinker,  p.  221.     Edin.,  1806.     Cp.  Idler,  No.  i. 


Bk.  I.Cap.  v.]         THE   WORLD  IN  CLOTHES.  299 

36  9.     Teufelsdrockh  himself.     See  28  17  ff. 

36  11.  Cooking  Animal.  Bos  well  seems  to  adopt  this  definition 
as  his  own.  "  My  definition  of  man  is  '  a  cooking  animal.'  The 
beasts  have  memory,  judgment,  and  all  the  faculties  and  passions 
of  our  minds  in  a  certain  degree ;  but  no  beast  is  a  cook."  A  Tour 
to  the  Hebrides,  p.  1 5,  n.     Lond.,  Routledge,  N.  D. 

36  13.  readies  his  steak.  Hudibras  was  one  of  Carlyle's  favorite 
books,  and  he  may  have  got  the  illustration  there.  Butler  does  not 
state  this  peculiarity  so  delicately.     See  Htidibras,  I,  ii.  265-278. 

36  17.  Monsieur  Ude.  Louis  Eustache  Ude,  a  famous  French 
cook  of  the  time.  His  portrait  is  number  twenty-five  in  the  Eraser 
series,  which  accounts  for  Carlyle's  reference.  A  brief  but  vague 
account  of  him  is  given  by  W.  Bates  in  The  Maclise  Portrait  Gal- 
lery, p.  114  ff.  Lond.,  1891. —  Orinocco  Indians.  "At  the  period 
of  these  inundations,  which  last  two  or  three  months,  the  Otomacs 
swallow  a  prodigious  quantity  of  earth.  We  found  heaps  of  balls  in 
their  huts,  piled  up  in  pyramids  three  or  four  feet  high.  These  balls 
were  five  or  six  inches  in  diameter.  The  earth  which  the  Otomacs 
eat,  is  a  very  fine  and  unctuous  clay,  of  a  yellowish  gray  colour ; 
and  being  slightly  baked  in  the  fire,  the  hardened  crust  has  a  tint 
inclining  to  red,  owing  to  the  oxide  of  iron  which  is  mingled  in  it." 
Humboldt,  Per  social  Narrative,  vol.  v.  p.  641.  Lond.,  1821.  See 
Lett.,  181. 

36  29.  Liverpool  Steam-carriages.  Stephenson's  invention  im- 
pressed deeply  the  thinking  men  of  the  time.  One  of  the  best  lines 
in  Locksley  Hall,  "  Let  the  great  world,  etc.,"  was  suggested  by  it. 
The  first  road  ran  from  Liverpool  to  Manchester,  and  was  opened 
Sept.  15,  1830.     Cp.  45  6,  n. 

37  5.  stout  old  Gao.  "  We  are  told,  that  when  the  oppression 
and  injustice  of  Zahak  had  continued  a  long  time,  Gavah  of  Isfahan, 
two  of  whose  sons  had  been  put  to  death  by  the  tyrant,  closed  the 
door  of  his  forge,  and  opened  the  gates  of  rebellion  in  the  face  of 
Zahak  :  he  took  from  his  waist  the  piece  of  leather  worn  by  black- 
smiths, when  at  work,  about  the  loins,  and  fixed  it  on  a  pole  :  through 
the  tyranny  and  excessive  violence  of  the  king,  he  cried  aloud,  and 
excited  the  people  to  revolt.  .  .  .  Gavah,  at  the  head  of  the  troops 
placed  under  the  shadow  of  his  valour,  traversed  the  civilized  world 
during  the  space  of  nearly  twenty  years,  subduing  every  country  he 
entered,  and  overcoming  every  monarch  whom  he  encountered ; 
and  completely  purified  the  surface  of  the  earth  from  the  contami- 
nation of  all  opposed  to  the  king  or  hostile   to  his  prosperity.     In 


300  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  VI. 

all  his  battles,  he  kept  with  him  the  piece  of  leather  which  had  been 
fixed  on  a  pole  at  the  time  of  his  heading  the  insurrection  against 
Zahak  ;  which  was  ever  after  known  by  the  name  of  Gavah's  ban- 
ner, by  the  elevation  and  unfurling  of  which  he  displayed  the  happy 
guarantee  and  omen  of  success  in  every  battle-field.  .  .  .  When  his 
government  had  continued  ten  years,  the  volume  of  his  life  became 
sealed  up  with  the  signature  of  the  indispensable  doom,  and  the 
steed  of  his  existence  fell  headlong  through  the  conflicting  accidents 
of  time.  Feridoon  was  afllicted  on  learning  this  dreadful  event,  and 
expressed  the  greatest  sorrow  for  his  death  :  the  ministers  of  state, 
the  nobles  of  the  kingdom,  and  the  commanders  of  the  troops, 
mourned  during  seven  days.  The  king  also  sent  orders  to  Isfahan 
to  deliver  up  the  estate  and  chattels  of  Gavah  to  his  heirs  ;  except- 
ing the  banner  of  Gavah,  which  he  demanded,  and,  having  orna- 
mented it  with  precious-stones,  placed  it  in  the  treasury.  The 
banner  was  only  produced  on  the  day  of  encounter  and  on  the  field 
of  battle,  when  the  eyes  of  the  ever-victorious  troops  were  animated 
with  delight,  and  their  hearts  \\Ax\\  fortitude,  on  beholding  it ;  every 
succeeding  monarch  of  Ajem  enriched  it  by  the  addition  of  a  precious 
diamond,  and  this  custom  continued  until  the  time  of  Omar,  the 
son  of  Kettab,  when  at  the  victory  of  Kadeseh,  it  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  True  Believers  ;  the  piece  of  leather  was  burnt  by  the  com- 
mand of  Omar,  and  the  precious-stones  were  divided  among  the 
indigent  and  objects  of  charity."  Histojy  of  the  Early  Kings  of 
Persia,  Translated  from  the  Original  Persian  of  Mirkhand  by 
David  Shea,  Lond.,  1832  ;  pp.  130-137.  See  also  Gibbon,  vol.  v. 
cap.  51,  pp.  301,  2  (Harper,  6  vol.  ed.). 

37  9.  John  Knox's  daughter.  Mrs.  Carlyle  was  a  Welsh,  and 
supposed  to  be  descended  from  the  John  Welsh,  minister  of  Ayr, 
who  married  in  1595  Elizabeth  third  and  youngest  daughter  of  John 
Knox.  "  This  lady  it  was  who,  when  her  husband  was  banished, 
and  when  she  was  told  by  King  James  that  he  might  return  to  Scot- 
land, if  he  would  acknowledge  the  authority  of  bishops,  raised  her 
apron  and  said,  '  Please  your  Majesty  I  'd  rather  kep  his  head 
there.'"  C.  E.  L.,\,  no;  11,31.  "Stand  by  me.  Darling,  like 
my  own  Jane,  like  the  descendant  of  John  Knox,  and  the  daughter 
of  John  Welsh,  and  the  wife  of  Thomas  Carlyle  :  what  can  daunt 
me  }  "     Lett.,  226.     See  also  Rem.,  I,  133. 

37  12.  Landgravine  Elizabeth.  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary.  On 
one  occasion  she  was  carrying,  against  her  husband's  wishes,  a 
basket  of  food  to  the  poor  at  her  gates.     On  being  surprised  by  him, 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  VI.]  APRONS.  301 

she  hid  the  basket  under  her  apron  and  declared  that  she  had  been 
gathering  roses.  Her  husband  pulled  the  apron  aside  and  found 
the  food  miraculously  changed  to  roses.  Carlyle  found  the  legend 
told  at  length  in  Musaeus'  Melechsala,  C. -Trans.,  I.  107. 

37  26.    sheet-iron  Aprons.     See  256  .5. 

38  12.  tucked-in  the  corner.  "  The  cassock  which  entirely  hides 
the  ordinary  dress  is  emblematical  of  the  spirit  of  recollection  and 
devotion  which  becomes  those  who  serve  in  the  sanctuary."  Charles 
Walker,  llie  Ritual  Reason  Why,  p.  34  ;   2d  ed.     Lond.,  1868. 

"  The  Cassock  or  Priest's  cassock  is  single-breasted  and  fastened 
from  the  throat  to  the  feet  by  numerous  buttons  extending  the 
whole  length.  At  the  back  the  cassock  is  very  full,  from  the  loins 
downwards,  and  sometimes  trails  a  considerable  length  on  the 
ground.  It  has  a  narrow  upright  collar,  and  close  .sleeves.  It  is 
bound  round  the  waist  with  a  band  a  yard  and  a-half  long  and  three 
inches  broad  called  a  Cincture.  The  recent  English  Cassock  is 
sometimes  folded  over  in  front,  and  kept  close  by  the  Cincture." 
Rev.  F.  G.  Lees,  Directorimn  Anglicanum,  p.  17  f.     Lond.,  1866. 

38  17.  printed  Paper  Aprons.  "  It  was  also  this  respect  for  all 
waste-paper  that  inspired  him  with  such  esteem  for  the  aprons  of 
French  cooks,  which  it  is  well  known  consist  of  printed  paper  ;  and 
he  often  wished  some  German  would  translate  these  aprons  :  indeed 
I  am  willing  to  believe  that  a  good  version  of  more  than  one  of  such 
paper  aprons  might  contribute  to  elevate  our  Literature  (this  Muse 
d,  belles  fesses),  and  serve  her  in  place  of  drivel  bib."  Qiiintus 
Fixleiji,  C.-Tra7is.,  TI,  123. 

39  5.  Fountain-of -motion.  This  is  apparently  Carlyle's  own 
coinage. 

39  11.  The  Journalists.  "  The  only  sovereigns  of  the  world  in 
these  days  are  the  literary  men  (were  there  any  such  in  Britain)  — 
the  prophets.  It  is  always  a  theocracy :  the  king  has  to  be  anointed 
by  the  priest ;  and  now  the  priest,  the  Goethe  for  example,  will  not, 
cannot  consecrate  the  existing  king  who  therefore  is  a  usurper,  and 
reigns  only  by  sufferance."  Carlyle's  Journal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  97. 
"  The  true  Church  of  England,  at  this  moment,  lies  in  the  Editors  of 
its  Newspapers.  These  preach  to  the  people  daily,  weekly  ;  admon- 
ishing kings  themselves  ;  advising  peace  or  war,  with  an  authority 
which  only  the  first  Reformers,  and  a  long-past  class  of  Popes,  were 
possessed  of  ;  inflicting  moral  censure  ;  imparting  moral  encourage- 
ment, consolation,  edification ;  in  all  ways  diligently  *  administering 
the  Discipline  of  the  Church.'     It  may  be  said,  too,  that  in  private 


302  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  VI. 

disposition  the  new  Preachers  somewhat  resemble  the  Mendicant 
Friars  of  old  times  :  outwardly  full  of  holy  zeal  ;  inwardly  not  with- 
out stratagem,  and  hunger  for  terrestrial  things."  Essays,  Signs  of 
the  Times,  II,  156;  cp.  229  18. 

39  14.  Stamped  Broad-Sheet.  The  Stamp  Act  came  in  force 
17 1 2,  and  continued  in  force  for  a  century  and  a  half.  The  stamp 
itself  was  red,  and  the  design  consisted  of  the  rose,  thistle  and 
shamrock,  surmounted  by  the  royal  crown.  See  ^\^\it^s  Journal  to 
Stella,  Jan.  31,  1710-11,  and  the  Spectator,  July  31,  1712. 

39  21.  Satan's  Invisible  World.  There  are  several  books  on 
witchcraft  with  titles  like  this :  "  The  Wonders  of  the  Invisible 
World,"  by  Cotton  Mather,  Boston,  1692  ;  "  A  View  of  the  Invisible 
World,  or  General  History  of  Apparitions,"  London,  1752  ;  "  Satan's 
Invisible  World  Discovered,  or  a  Choice  Collection  of  Modern 
Relations,"  by  George  Sinclair,  Edinburgh,  1780.  The  reference  to 
the  "old  authentic  Presbyterian  Witchfinder"  shows  that  Carlyle 
was  thinking  of  Cotton  Mather  and  confused  his  book  with  Sin- 
clair's. 

"  The  New-England  Puritan  burns  witches,  wrestles  for  months 
with  the  horrors  of  Satan's  invisible  world,  and  all  ghastly  phan- 
tasms, the  daily  and  hourly  precursors  of  the  Last  Day ;  then 
suddenly  bethinks  him  that  he  is  frantic,  weeps  bitterly,  prays  con- 
tritely, and  the  history  of  that  gloomy  season  lies  behind  him  like  a 
frightful  dream."     Essays,  II,  136  ;  cp.  id.,  I,  162. 

39  25.    good  Homer. 

Those  oft  are  stratagems  which  error  seem, 
Nor  is  it  Homer  nods,  but  we  that  dream. 

Pope,  Essay  oti  Criticism,  1.  179  f. 

—  quaudoque  bonus  dormitat  Homerus. 

Horace,  Ars  Poetica,  1.  359. 

40  6.  Beggaring  all  fancy.  "  Some  of  my  readers  may  require 
to  be  informed  that  Jacques  Callot  was  a  Lorraine  painter  of  the 
seventeenth  century  ;  a  wild  genius,  whose  Temptation  of  St.  An- 
thony is  said  to  exceed,  in  chaotic  incoherence,  that  of  Teniers  him- 
self." Essays,  E.  T.  W.  Hoffmann,  I,  Appendix,  p.  437,  n. — 
Teniers,  David  (161 0-1690).  There  were  two  of  this  name  ;  the 
reference  is  to  the  younger.  He  is  noted  for  his  painting  of  Flemish 
peasants  drinking,  dancing,  etc.  —  Callot,  J.  (i  593-1635).  A  French 
engraver,  famous  for  grouping  large  numbers  of  figures  in  a  small 
space.     Carlyle  knew   Callot   probably  from    Hoffmann's  Eantasie- 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  VII.]     MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.  303 

Stiicke  itt  Callofs  Manier,  one  of  which,  Der  Goldne  Top/,  was 
included  in  German  Romance. 

40  9.     touched  not  seldom.     Cp.  5  30,  n. 

40  15.  Merrick's  valuable  Work.  The  name  is  Meyrick,  Samuel 
Rush.  His  book,  A  critical  Inquiry  into  Ancient  Armour  (London, 
1824,  3  vols.),  is  praised  by  Scott  and  the  Edijtburgh  Reviezv. 

40  18.  Paulinus.  The  name  should  be  Paullini,  Christian 
Franz  (1643-17 12),  a  compiler,  says  Brockhaus,  of  the  most  tasteless 
books.  He  is  the  author  of  Philosophische  Luststiinden  oder  Curi- 
ositdten,  2  Theile,  Frankfurt,  1709,  and  Zeitkilrzende  erbauliche 
Lust.  Franckfurt  a.  M.,  1695,  ^7-2  ;  3  vols.  Carlyle  spells  it 
Paullinus  in  Eraser,  but  in  subsequent  editions  one  '  1 '  is  dropped. 
Graesse  makes  the  same  mistake. 

40  20.     Did  we  behold.     See  41  14,  n. 

40  30.     find  his  place.     Tennyson  expands  the  same  thought : 

"  —  Could  the  dead,  whose  dying  eyes 

Were  closed  with  wail,  resume  their  life 
They  would  but  find  in  child  and  wife 
An  iron  welcome  when  they  rise. 


"  But  if  they  came  who  passed  away, 

Behold  their  brides  in  other  hands ; 
The  hard  heir  strides  about  the  lands 
And  will  not  yield  them  for  a  day." 

Iti  Memoriam,  xc. 

41  14.  Teusinke.  From  the  context  this  seems  to  have  been  a 
name  for  the  fashionable  "  bell-girdle  "  described  below.  The  pas- 
sage in  quotation  marks  is  freely  translated  from  the  authority  cited, 
with  interpolations  of  Carlyle's  own. 

"Anno  1672,  28  April,  ward  alhie,  wie  weit  und  breit  sonst,  ein 
gross  Feurzeichen  des  Abends  in  der  Lufft  gesehen.  Wenn  wir  die 
Tracht  der  domaligen  Stadt  jetzo  sehen  solten,  wiirden  wir  driiber 
lachen,  und  wenn  die  verfaulte  Welt  unsren  Plunder  sehe,  wiirde  sie 
sich  kreutzigen  und  segnen.  Die  reichen  Leute  hatten  Teusincke 
um,  war  ein  silberner  Giirtel,  da  hiengen  Glocklein  an,  wenn  einer 
gieng,  so  schellte  es  um  ihn  her.  Das  Manns-Volk  hatte  Kappen, 
da  waren  wollene  Traddeln  dran  Ehlen  lang,  und  setzen  die  liber 
eine  Seiten.  Ihre  Schuh  waren  forn  spitzig  fast  Ehlen  lang,  und 
auf  den  Seiten  geschniirt  mit  Schniiren,  und  Holz-Schuhe  mit 
Schnacken  auch  Ehlen  lang.  Ja  einige  machten  forn  an  die  Spit- 
zen  Schellen.     Auch  hatten  die  Manner  Hosen  ohne  Gesass,  bunden 


304  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  VII. 

solche  an  die  Hembder.  Die  reichen  Jungfrauen  hatten  Rocke 
ausgeschnitten  hinten  und  forn,  dass  die  Brust  und  Riicken  fast 
bloss  war.  Auch  waren  die  Rocke  gefliigelt,  und  auf  den  Seiten 
gefiittert.  Etliche,  damit  sie  schmahl  blieben,  schniirten  sich  so 
enge,  dass  mann  sie  umspannen  mochte.  Die  Adelichen  Frauen 
hatten  geschwantzte  Rocke,  4  oder  5  Ehlen  lang,  so  die  Knaben 
nachtrugen.  Die  Frauen  und  Magde  hatten  an  Rocken  dopple 
diicke  Saume  Hand  breit,  die  reichen  Weiber  silbeme  Kneuffen, 
oder  breite  silberne  Schalen  an  Rocken,  von  oben  biss  auf  die 
Schuh,  die  Magde  trugen  Haarbander  von  Silber  und  iibergoldte 
Spangen  und  hangende  B'lammen  zum  Geschmuck  auf  den  Haup- 
tem.  Die  Weiber  trugen  auch  lange  Mantel  mit  Falten,  unten  weit, 
mit  einem  zwiefachen  Saum  handbreit,  oben  mit  einem  diicken 
gestarckten  Kragen  anderthalb  Schuh  lang,  und  hiessen  Kragen- 
Mantel.  Die  Kriegs-Riistung  war  eine  Armbrust  mit  einem  Stegreiff. 
Eben  das  ward,  wenn  mans  spannte,  eingetreten  mit  einem  Instru- 
ment, das  hiess  ein  Krieck,  gemacht  von  starcken  Riemen  oder 
Seyden  und  eisernen  Hacken.  Auch  war  ein  Kleid,  das  hiess 
Jegke,  gemacht  von  dopplem  Barchent,  mit  Baumvollen  gefiillt  und 
durchsteppt  sehr  diick,  dass  nicht  leicht  ein  Pfeil  durchschiessen 
konte  ;  auch  ein  holtzern  Schildt  oder  ein  Brust-Eisen,  oben  breit, 
mitten  rund,  und  etwas  erhaben,  unten  fast  spitzig,  auswendig 
gemahlt,  inwendig  mit  einem  Riemen,  da  mans  konte  bey  tragen. 
Auch  hatten  sie  Wamster  von  Barchent,  mitten  w^aren  dopple  Kragen 
von  Tuch  mit  Teich  zusammen  gekleistert,  und  kurtze  Rocke  mit 
zwei  Falten,  kaum  wurde  der  Hinterste  damit  bedeckt.  Das  war 
damals  die  Kreutzburgische  Kleider-Mode."  C.  F.  Paullini,  Zeit- 
kilrtzende  erbauUchc  Lust,  II,  678.     Franckfurt  am  Mayn,  1722. 

41  31.     Rich  maidens.     See  previous  note. 

42  1.     Brave  Cleopatras  : 

The  barge  she  sat  in,  like  a  burnished  throne, 

Bum'd  on  the  water  : 

on  each  side  her 

Stood  pretty  dimpled  boys,  like  smiling  Cupids, 

at  the  helm 

A  seeming  mermaid  steers. 

Antony  and  Cleopatra,  ii    2,  191  ff. 

42  18.     doublets  of  fustian.     See  41  14,  n. 

42  33.     Raleigh's  fine  mantle.     See  Kenikvorth,  cap.  xv. 

43  2.     red-painted  on  the  nose.     "  Queen  Elizabeth  never  saw 
herself,  after  she  became  old,  in  a  true  glass  ;    they  painted  her  and 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  VII.J      MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.  305 

sometymes  would  vermilion  her  nose."  Ben  Jonson's  Conversations 
with  Driini7no)id  of  IIazothornden,xiv.  Shakespeare  Society  Publi- 
cations. 

43  ]3.  luckless  Courtier.  The  only  authority  for  this  tale  I 
have  been  able  to  discover,  is  J.  Bulwer,  Atithropometamorphosis : 
Man  Transforni'd ;  or,  the  Artificial  Chajigeling.  Lond.,  1650. 
For  full  title  of  work  see  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  article  Bulwer.  Cp.  Fair- 
holt,  Costume  in  Engla^id,  I,  263.  Lond.,  1885.  The  date  of  the 
costume  (i6th  cent.)  is  inconsistent  with  Carlyle's  mention  of  Kaiser 
Otto ;  and  this  difficulty  I  have  been  unable  to  surmount. 

43  20.  Erostratus,  or  Eratostratus.  "  An  Ephesian  who  burnt 
the  famous  temple  of  Diana,  the  same  night  that  Alexander  the 
Great  was  born.  .  .  .  Eratostratus  did  this  villainy  merely  to 
eternize  his  name  by  so  uncommon  an  action."  Letnpriere,  cp. 
176  3,  n.     Cp.  Browne,  Urn  Burial,  v.  44  (Bohn). 

43  21.  Milo.  "A  celebrated  athlete  of  Crotona  in  Italy.  .  .  . 
It  is  said  that  he  carried  on  his  shoulders  a  young  bullock  4  years 
old,  for  about  40  yards,  and  afterwards  killed  it  with  one  blow  of 
his  fist,  and  eat  it  up  in  one  day."  Lempricre :  cp.  Browne,  Pscji- 
dodox.  Epidcni.,  bk.  VII,  cap.  xviii.  —  Henry  Darnley.  The  second 
husband  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots.  "  Robertson,  one  of  the  best  of 
those  historians,  imagines  Mary  to  have  been  captivated  by  his 
gigantic  figure  ;  yet,  let  us  recollect,  that  Darnley  was,  merely,  a 
long  lad  of  nineteeri.  Sir  James  Melvill,  who  was  present  in  Weemys 
castle,  however,  informs  us,  "  that  the  Queen  took  very  well  with 
him,  and  said  to  Melvill,  on  the  same  day,  that  Darnley  was  the 
properest  and  best  proportioned  long  man  that  she  had  ever  seen." 
Chalmers,  Life  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  I,  201.  Lond.,  1S22.  "Last 
night  I  sat  up  very  late  reading  Scott's  *  History  of  Scotland.'  .  .  . 
Strange  that  a  man  should  think  that  he  was  writing  the  history 
of  a  nation  while  he  is  chronicling  the  amours  of  a  wanton  young 
woman  called  queen,  and  a  sulky  booby  recommended  to  kingship 
for  his  fine  limbs,  and  then  blown  up  with  gunpowder  for  his  ill 
behaviour  !  "     Journal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  89. 

43  24.  Boileau  Despreaux.  Nicolas  Boileau  (i 636-1 7 11),  famous 
French  critic  and  poet.  "  On  lit,  dans  I'Annee  litteraire,  que  Boileau, 
encore  enfant,  jouant  dans  une  cour,  tomba.  Dans  sa  chute,  sa 
jaquette  se  retrousse  ;  un  dindon  lui  donne  plusieurs  coups  de  bee 
sur  une  partie  tres  delicate.  Boileau  en  fut  toute  sa  vie  incommode  : 
et  de-la,  peut-ctre,  cette  severite  de  moeurs,  cette  disette  de  senti- 
ment qu'on  remarque  dans  tous  ses  ouvrages  ;  de-la  sa  satyre  centre 


3o6  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  VIII. 

les  femmes,  centre  Lulli,  Quinault,  et  centre  toutes  les  poesies 
galantes.  Peut-etre  son  antipathie  contre  les  dindons  occasiona- 
t-elle  I'aversion  secrete  qu'il  eut  toujours  pour  les  jesuites  qui  les 
ont  apportes  en  France.  .  .  ."  Ilelvetius,  De  P Esprit,  Discours 
III,  Ch.  I,  note  (</). 

43  27.  prayer  of  Themistocles.  "  Cicero  has  preserved  another 
of  his  sayings,  which  deserves  mentioning.  When  Simonides  offered 
to  teach  Themistocles  the  art  of  memory,  he  answered,  '  Ah,  rather 
teach  me  the  art  of  forgetting  ;  for  I  often  remember  what  I  would 
not,  and  cannot  forget  what  I  would.' "  Langhorne's  Pliitaj-ch,  p. 
91,  n.  N.  Y.,  1868.  Cicero,  De  Orat.,  II,  cap.  74,  §  299,  and  cap. 
86,  §§251-53;  cp.  C.E.L.,  I,  202,. 

44  I.  Bolivar's  Cavalry.  Simon  Bolivar  (i 783-1830),  the  South 
American  Washington.  He  led  the  Spanish  states  in  their  success- 
ful rebellion  against  Spain  from  1812  to  1824.  "A  blanket  of  about 
a  yard  square,  with  a  hole,  or  rather  slit,  cut  in  the  centre,  through 
which  the  wearer  thrusts  his  head,  falls  on  each  side  of  his  shoulders 
thus  covering  his  body,  and  leaving  his  bare  arms  at  perfect  liberty 
to  manage  his  horse,  or  mule  and  lance."  G.  Hippisley,  A  Narra- 
tive of  the  Expedition  to  the  /divers  Orinoco  and  Apure,  p.  415. 
Lond.,  1819.     Cp.  Essays,  IV,  340  f. 

44  1].  Old-Roman  contempt.  For  example,  the  costume  of 
Cincinnatus  when  the  deputation  from  the  Senate  found  him  at  the 
plow.     See  Livy,  III,  26. 

44  13.     Descriptive-Historical.     See  29  30. 

45  4.     founded  on  Cloth.     See  53  34. 
45  6.    Faust's  mantle. 

Faust. 

Wie  kommen  wir  denn  aus  dem  Haus  ? 
Wo  hast  du  Pferde,  Knecht  und  Wagen  ? 

Mephistopheles. 

Wir  breiten  nur  den  Mantel  aus, 
Der  soil  uns  durch  die  Liifte  tragen. 

Faust,  I,  iv.  end. 

Describing  his  sensations  on  his  first  railway  journey,  Carlyle  says, 
"  Out   of  one  vehicle  into  another,  snorting,  roaring  we  flew  :    the 
likest  thing  to  a  Faust's  flight  on  the  Devil's  Mantle."     C.  L.  L.,  I, 
179  ;  cp.  36  29,  n.  See  C.-Trans.,  II,  82. 
45  7.     Apostle's  Dream.     See  Acts  x.  10-16. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  VIII.J     WORLD    OUT  OF  CLOTHES.  307 

45  9.     inane   limboes.     See  Orlando  Fwioso,  Cant,  xxxiv.,  the 
Limbo  of  Vanity. 

Deep  in  a  vale,  conducted  by  his  guide, 
Where  rose  a  mountain  steep  on  either  side, 
He  came  and  saw  (a  wonder  to  relate) 
Whate'er  was  wasted  in  our  earthly  state 
Here  safely  treasured  :  each  neglected  good  ; 
Time  squander'd,  or  occasion  ill-bestow'd. 

Hoole's  Translation,  11.  562-567. 

45  22.    a  mighty  maze. 

Expatiate  free  o'er  all  this  scene  of  man  ; 
A  mighty  maze  !  but  not  without  a  plan. 

Pope,  Essay  on  Man,  5  f. 

45  26.     Biographical  Documents.     See  23  18,  n. 

46  3,  4.     utmost   verge.       For  similar   thought   see   Tennyson's 
Ulysses,  the  closing  lines. 

Come,  my  friends, 
'Tis  not  too-late  to  seek  a  newer  world. 


for  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars  until  I  die. 

It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  Happy  Isles. 

46  12.  das  Wesen.  For  an  example  of  an  '  Ich '  naming  itself, 
see  Essays,  II,  177. 

46  23.  Cogito.  The  famous  phrase  of  Descartes  (i  596-1650): 
'  Ac  proinde  haec  cognitio,  ego  cogito,  ergo  sicm,  est  omnium  prima 
et  certissima,  quae  cuilibet  ordine  philosophanti  occurrat.'  Prin- 
cipia  Philosophiae,  I,  7  and  10.     Amsterdam,  1650. 

46  31.  Dream-grotto.  Apparently  an  allusion  to  the  famous 
cave  of  Plato.     Republic,  Bk.  VII. 

47  3.     Creation  says  one.     From  Richter  :  but  unidentified. 

47  9.  a  net  quotient.  For  similar  mathematical  figure,  see 
116  24,  and  n.;  also  173  28. 

47  11.  Moscow  Retreats.  In  181  i-i 2,  Napoleon  invaded  Russia 
with  600,000  men,  reached  Moscow,  and  by  the  destruction  of  the 
city  was  compelled  to  retreat  in  the  midst  of  winter.  The  conse- 
quent suffering  and  loss  of  life  were  terrible. 

47  17.     right  hand.     See  Jonah  iv.  11. 

47  20.  the  Sphinx's  secret.  "The  riddle  proposed  by  the 
Sphinx  ran  in  these  terms :    '  What  creature  is  it  that  moves  on  four 


3o8  AZOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  VIII. 

feet  in  the  morning,  on  two  feet  at  noonday,  and  on  three  towards 
the  going  down  of  the  sun  ? '  Qulipus,  after  some  consideration, 
answered  that  the  creature  was  Man,  who  creeps  on  the  ground  with 
hands  and  feet  when  an  infant,  walks  upright  in  the  vigor  of  man- 
hood, and  leans  upon  a  staff  in  old  age.  Immediately  the  dreadful 
Sphinx  confessed  the  truth  of  his  solution  by  throwing  herself  head- 
long from  a  point  of  rock  into  the  sea  ;  her  power  being  overthrown 
as  soon  as  her  secret  had  been  detected."  De  Quincey,  The  Sphinxes 
Riddle,  Collected  Works,  vol.  XX.     Boston,  1856. 

47  29.     nothing  can  act.     See  also  48  15,  n. 

48  14.  no  Space  and  no  Time.  Carlyle  is  among  the  first  to 
popularize  German  philosophy  in  England.  His  own  exposition  is 
of  the  clearest. 

"■  The  Idealist,  again,  boasts  that  his  Philosphy  is  Transcendental, 
that  is,  '  ascending  beyond  the  senses '  ;  which,  he  asserts,  all  Philos- 
ophy, properly  so-called,  by  its  nature  is  and  must  be  :  and  in  this 
way  he  is  led  to  various  unexpected  conclusions.  To  a  Transcen- 
dentalist.  Matter  has  an  existence,  but  only  as  a  Phenomenon  :  were 
we  not  there,  neither  would  it  be  there  ;  it  is  a  mere  Relation,  or 
rather  the  result  of  a  Relation  between  our  living  Souls  and  the 
great  First  Cause  ;  and  depends  for  its  apparent  qualities  on  our 
bodily  and  mental  organs  ;  having  itself  no  intrinsic  qualities  ;  being, 
in  the  common  sense  of  that  word,  Nothing.  The  tree  is  green  and 
hard,  not  of  its  own  natural  virtue,  but  simply  because  my  eye  and 
my  hand  are  fashioned  so  as  to  discern  such  and  such  appearances 
under  such  and  such  conditions.  Nay,  as  an  Idealist  might  say, 
even  on  the  most  popular  grounds,  must  it  not  be  so  ?  Bring  a 
sentient  Being  with  eyes  a  little  different,  with  fingers  ten  times 
harder  than  mine  ;  and  to  him  that  Thing  which  I  call  Tree  shall  be 
yellow  and  soft,  as  truly  as  to  me  it  is  green  and  hard.  Form  his 
Nervous-structure  in  all  points  the  7-everse  of  mine,  and  this  same 
Tree  shall  not  be  combustible  or  heat-producing,  but  dissoluble 
and  cold-producing,  not  high  and  convex,  but  deep  and  con- 
cave ;  shall  simply  have  all  properties  exactly  the  reverse  of 
those  I  attribute  to  it.  There  is,  in  fact,  says  Fichte,  no  Tree 
there  ;  but  only  a  Manifestation  of  Power  from  something  which 
is  not  I.  The  same  is  true  of  material  Nature  at  large,  of  the 
whole  visible  Universe,  with  all  its  movements,  figures,  accidents 
and  qualities  ;  all  are  Impressions  produced  on  me  by  something 
different  fro/n  me.  This,  we  suppose,  may  be  the  foundation  of 
what  Fichte  means  by  his  far-famed  Ich  zxidNieht-Ieh  (I  and  Not-I); 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  VIII. J      WORLD    OUT  OF  CLOTHES.  309 

words  which,  taking  lodging  (to  use  the  Hudibrastic  phrase)  in 
certain  '  heads  that  were  to  be  let  unfurnished '  occasioned  a  hollow 
echo,  as  of  Laughter  from  the  empty  Apartments  ;  though  the 
words  are  in  themselves  quite  harmless,  and  may  represent  the  basis 
of  a  metaphysical  Philosophy  as  fitly  as  any  other  words.  But 
farther,  and,  what  is  still  stranger  than  such  Idealism,  according  to 
these  Kantean  systems,  the  organs  of  the  Mind  too,  what  is  called 
the  Understanding,  are  of  no  less  arbitrary  and,  as  it  were,  acci- 
dental character  than  those  of  the  Body.  Time  and  Space  them- 
selves are  not  external  but  internal  entities  :  they  have  no  outward 
existence  ;  there  is  no  Time  and  no  Space  out  of  the  mind  ;  they  are 
mere  forms  of  man's  spiritual  being,  laws  under  which  his  thinking 
nature  is  constituted  to  act.  This  seems  the  hardest  conclusion  of 
all,  but  it  is  an  important  one  with  Kant  ;  and  is  not  given  forth  as 
a  dogma  but  carefully  deduced  in  his  Critik  der  Reinen  Verinmft 
with  great  precision,  and  the  strictest  form  of  argument."  Essays, 
N'ovalis,  II,  103  f. 

48  15.  light-sparkles.  See  De  Quincey,  Analects  from  Richter, 
Dream  on  the  Universe,  XIII,  138.  Edin.,  1863.  "Nothing  can  act 
but  where  it  is  .''  True  — if  you  will  —  only  zvJiere  is  it?  Is  not  the 
distant,  the  dead,  whom  I  love  and  sorrow  for  Here,  in  the  genuine 
spiritual  sense,  as  really  as  the  table  I  now  write  on  .^  Space  is  a 
mode  of  our  sense,  so  is  time  (this  I  only  half  understand) ;  we  are 
—  we  know  not  what  —  light  sparkles  floating  in  the  aether  of  the 
Divinity  !  "    Journal,  June  8,  1830,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  85  ;  cp.  47  29. 

48  20.     '  phantasy  of  our  Dream.'     Cp.  46  31,  n. 

48  21.  Faust.  Goethe's  dramatic  poem,  published  in  1808; 
based  on  the  mediaeval  legend  of  the  scholar  who  sold  his  soul 
for  supernatural  power  and  knowledge.  See  Ward's  Clarendon 
Press  edition  of  Doctor  Fansttis,  Introd. 

48  23.     In  Being's  floods.     See  Fanst,  I,  sc.  i,  11.  501-509. 

49  5.  Horse  I  ride.  Though  not  a  good  horseman,  Carlyle  rode 
much  all  his  life.  See  C  E.  L.,  I,  331  n.,  II,  127;  E.  Lett.,  275, 
n,,  280,  285,  338  ;  Rem.,  I,  201. 

49  33.  Strange  enough,  Cp.  Bk.  Ill,  cap.  viii.  for  same  idea 
expanded. 

50  13.  one  and  indivisible.  The  watchword  of  the  first  French 
Republic.     Cp.  S3  4. 

50  20.  Dutch  Cows.  I  find  that  in  Carlyle's  time,  English 
graziers  and  '  agricultural  dandies  '  dressed  sheep  in  such  garments. 
Carlyle  could  npt  have  seen  Gouda  at  this   time  ;    but  must  have 


3IO  AZOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  IX. 

got  the  notion  from  some  book,  prol)ably  from  one  of  Richter's. 
See  B.  H.  Malkin,  Classical  Disquisitions  and  Curiosities,  p.  431, 
Lond.,  1825,  who  cites  Sallust,  ii.  47,  to  show  that  the  practice  was 
known  to  the  ancients. 

50  26.    forked  straddling  animal.     Cp.  Lear,  iii.  4. 

51  5.     Sansculottist.     Cp.  13  13,  n. 

51  6.  Adamite.  "  Adamians  go  naked,  because  Adam  did  so  in 
Paradise."  Ajiatomy  of  Melajickoly,  Part  3,  Sect.  4,  mem.  i,  sub.  3, 
p.  624.  •'  One  Picardus,  a  Frenchman,  that  invented  a  new  sect  of 
Adamites,  to  go  naked  as  Adam  did,"  ib.,  Part  3,  Sect.  3,  mem.  4, 
sub.  2,  p.  585.     For  Carlyle's  reading  in  1826,  see  C.  E.  L.,  I,  385. 

51  13.    sattest  muling. 

—  At  first,  the  infant 
Mewling  and  puking  in  his  nurse's  arms. 

As  Vo?{  Like  It,  ii.  7. 

51  23.  Buck  or  Blood.  Slang  names  for  ultra-fashionabie  young 
men  at  various  times.  The  Macaroni,  distinguished  by  a  roll  of  hair 
on  the  top  of  his  head,  made  his  appearance  about  1786.  See  Fair- 
holt's  History  of  Costume,  I,  391;  the  Incroyable  in  the  time  of  the 
Directory.  The  reign  of  the  Dandies  was  from  about  18 13  to  1830. 
Byron  and  Lytton  represent  them  among  men  of  letters.  The 
Eraser  portrait  of  Count  D'Orsay  preserves  for  later  ages  a  sug- 
gestion of  their  splendor.  Some  of  these  words  survive  in  current 
American  slang  and  local  usage  :  e.g.,  Buck  Fanshaiv's  Fzmeral, 
Yankee  Doodle.  "  Buck  "  in  the  compound  "  country-buck  "  and 
"  blood  "  are  thoroughly  understood  in  rural  Ontario.  For  dress  of 
'buck,'  see  D'lsraeli,  Curiosities  of  Literature,  \,  422.     Lond.,  1817. 

52  6.     Horse  I  ride.     See  49  5. 

52  12.     deep  calling.     Ps.  xlii.  7,  adapted. 
52  16.     '  sailor  of  the  air.' 

"  Und  diese  Wolken  die  nach  Mittag  jagen, 
Sie  suchen  Frankreichs  femen  Ozean. 
Eilende  Wolken,  Segler  der  Liifte  —  " 

Schiller,  Maria  Stuart,  iii.  i. 

Cp.  Carlyle,  Life  of  Schiller,  p.  134.  Lond.,  1874. — wreck  of 
matter. 

The  soul  secured  in  her  existence  smiles 
At  the  drawn  dagger  and  defies  its  point. 
The  stars  shall  fade  away,  the  sun  himself 
Grow  dim  with  age,  and  nature  sink  in  years  ; 
But  thou  shalt  flourish  in  immortal  youth, 
Unhurt  amid  the  war  of  elements. 
The  wreck  of  matter  and  the  crush  of  worlds. 

Addison,  Cato,  i.  i. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  IX.]  ADAMJTISM.  3  j  i 

52  25.     *  Aboriginal  Savages.'     Cp.  ZZ  22. 

52  28.     *  matted  cloak.'     See  33  25.—  '  natural  fell,'  ib.,  26. 

52  31.     *so  tailorise.'     See  50  I8. 

53  3.  'as  a  Sign.'  Luke  ii.  34,  and  elsewhere  :  "/cr  a  sign." 
Carlyle  often  adapts  unconsciously  when  quoting.  The  first 
Quakers  in  New  England  sometimes  preached  naked.  See  Long- 
fellow, JoJui  Endicott,  i.  i;  and  Proceed.  Alass.  Hist.  Soc.  xviii.  300. 

53  4.     old  Adamites.     See  51  6,  n. 

53  10.  You  see.  "  You  see  two  men  fronting  each  other.  One 
sits  dressed  in  red  cloth,  the  other  stands  dressed  in  threadbare  blue; 
the  first  says  to  the  other,  '  Be  hanged  and  anatomised  !  '  and  it  is 
forthwith  put  in  execution  till  Number  Two  is  a  skeleton.  Whence 
comes  it .-'  These  men  have  no  physical  hold  of  each  other ;  they 
are  not  in  contact.  Each  of  the  bailiffs,  etc.,  is  in  his  own  skin,  and 
not  hooked  to  any  other.  The  reason  is,  Man  is  a  Spirit.  Invisible 
influences  run  through  Society,  and  make  it  a  mysterious  whole  full 
of  life  and  inscrutable  activities  and  capabilities."  Journal,  June  8, 
1830.    C.  E.  L.,  II,  85. 

53  17.    nothing  can  act.     See  47  29. 

53  34.     founded  upon  Cloth.     See  45  4. 

54  1.  often  in  my  atrabiliar  moods.  "  Often  when  I  read  of 
pompous  ceremonials,  drawing-room  levees,  and  coronations,  on  a 
sudden  the  clothes  fly  off  the  whole  party  in  my  fancy,  and  they  stand 
there  in  a  half  ludicrous,  half  horrid  condition."  Journal,  Aug. 
1830.     C.  E.  Z.,  II,  86. 

54  2.  Frankfort  Coronations.  The  coronation  of  Archduke 
Joseph  at  Frankfort  a.  M.,  1764.  See  Goethe,  Aus  meinetn  Leben, 
Th.  I,  Bh.  5.  "  The  opera  seria  of  a  Frankfort  Coronation." 
C. -Trans.,  II,  161. 

54  2.     Royal  drawing-rooms.     Presentation  at  the  English  court. 

54  3.  Levees,  couchees.  The  formal  receptions  by  Louis  XIV. 
of  his  courtiers  on  rising  from  bed  in  the  morning,  and  on  retiring  at 
night. 

54  32.  Haupt-  und  Staats-Action.  A  kind  of  drama  first  intro- 
duced at  Dresden  by  Velthin  in  the  17th  cent.,  corresponding  to  our 
Heroic  drama  of  the  Restoration.  See  Faust,  sc.  i,  1.  583,  for  the 
word. 

54  33.  Pickleherring.  Clown,  a  word  brought  to  Germany  by 
the  English  Comedians,  according  to  Kluge. 

54  34.  the  tables.  Solventur  risu  tabulae.  Hor.  Sat.  ii.  i. 
86.     The  indictment  will  be  laughed  out  of  court. 


312  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  IX. 

55  4.  Windlestraw.  Wellington  ?  The  Iron  Duke  was  in  1830 
the  best  abused  man  in  England.  He  had  to  barricade  his  house  in 
London  to  prevent  mob  violence,  on  account  of  his  opposition  to 
Reform. 

55  8.  infandum.  Navibus  (infandum !)  amissis.  Ain.  i.  251. 
"  Of  all  the  deplorables  and  despicables  of  this  city  and  time,  the 
saddest  are  the  '  literary  men.'  Infandum  !  Infandum  !  "  C.  E.  L., 
II,  191. 

55  11.  a  forked  radish.  "  When  he  was  naked,  he  was  for  all 
the  world  like  a  forked  radish,  with  a  head  fantastically  carved  upon 
it  with  a  knife."     Henry  IV.  b.  iii.  2. 

55  13.  St.  Stephen's.  St.  Stephen's  Hall,  on  the  site  of  St. 
Stephen's  chapel,  part  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

55  15.  Bed  of  Justice.  Lit  de  Justice,  a  French  court  for 
registering  the  king's  decrees.  Jean  Paul  also  puns  on  the  word. 
"  Therefore  I  again  wrapped  myself  in  my  passive  lit  de  jicstice^ 
SchmclzWs  Jouj-ney,  C.-Trans.,  II,  82.  See  Tristram  Shandy, 
orig.  ed.,  vol.  VI,  caps.  xvi.  xvii. 

55  15-17.     Solace.     See  54  I8.  —  infirmity.     See  54  I6. 

55  26.  benefit  of  clergy.  A  criminal  could  once  escape  the 
severer  penalties  of  the  civil  law  by  proving  that  he  was  a  cleric  and 
not  a  layman.     He  was  then  tried  in  an  ecclesiastical  court. 

55  34.  turkeys  driven.  "  Ye  lastly,  who  drive  —  ;  and  why 
not .''  Ye  also  who  are  driven,  like  turkeys,  to  market,  with  a  stick 
and  a  red  clout,  —  meditate,  —  meditate  I  beseech  you,  upon  Trim's 
hat."      Tristram  Shandy,  orig.  ed.,  vol.  V,  cap.  vii. 

56  27.  Joan  and  My  Lady.  Servant  and  mistress.  "  Some  love 
my  lady  and  some  Joan.     Love's  Labours  Lost,  iii.  i. 

57  2.    Chaos  were  come. 

—  Perdition  catch  my  soul, 
But  I  do  love  thee  !  and  when  I  love  thee  not, 
Chaos  is  come  again. 

Othello,  iii.  3, 

57  9.    Serbonian  Bog. 

A  gulf  profound  as  that  Serbonian  bog 
Betwixt  Damiata  and  Mount  Casius  old, 
Where  armies  whole  have  sunk. 

Par.  Lost,  ii.  392  ff. 

57  14.  Are  we  Opossums  ?  "  Only  here  I  could  have  wished, 
so  uncertain  is  the  stowage  of  such  things,  that  I  had  been  an  Ape 
with  cheek-pouches  or  some  sort  of  Opossum  with  a  natural  bag, 


Bk.  I,Cap.  X.]  PURE   REASON.  313 

that  so  I  might  have  reposited  these  necessaries  of  existence  in 
pockets  which  were  sensitive."  Schmelzle' s  Journey ,  C-  Trans.,  IT,  53. 
57  16.  pineal  gland.  At  the  base  of  the  brain  ;  supposed  to 
contain  the  soul.  "  Now  from  the  best  accounts  he  had  been  able 
to  get  of  this  matter,  he  was  satisfied  that  it  could  not  be  where  Des 
Cartes  had  fixed  it,  upon  the  top  of  the  pineal  gland  of  the  brain  ; 
which,  as  he  philosophised,  formed  a  cushion  for  her  about  the  size 
of  a  marrow-pea  ;  tho',  to  speak  the  truth,  as  so  many  nerves  did 
terminate  all  in  that  one  place,  —  'twas  no  bad  conjecture."  Tris- 
tram Shandy,  vol.  II,  cap.  xix. 

57  33.     Gouda  cows.     See  50  20,  n. 

58  1.  To  the  eye.  "■  What  is  a  man  if  you  look  at  him  with  the 
mere  logical  sense,  with  the  understanding  ;  a  pitiful  hungry  biped 
that  wears  breeches."    Journal,  Aug.  1830.     C.  E.  L.,  II,  86. 

58  11.     Strange  garment.     See  48  22. 

58  14.  conflux  of  Eternities.  "  The  poorest  Day  that  passes 
over  us  is  the  conflux  of  two  Eternities  ;  it  is  made  up  of  currents 
that  issue  from  the  remotest  Past,  and  flow  onwards  into  the 
remotest  Future."     Essays,  Sig7is  oj  the  Times,  II,  138. 

58  18.  Chrysostom.  St.  John  (347-407),  called  the  "golden- 
mouthed  "  for  his  eloquence,  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the  Christian 
Fathers.  I  have  been  unable  to  identify  the  phrase.  The  follow- 
ing expresses  the  idea : 

"Si  enim  Ecclesiam  suffodere  grave  est  et  scelestum,  multo  magis 
si  hoc  templo  spiritual!  fiat.  Augustior  quippe  est  homo  magisque 
venerandus,  quam  Ecclesia.  Non  enim  propter  parietes  mortuus 
est  Christus,  sed  propter  ista  Spiriti  Sancti  templa."  Collected  Works, 
IV,  351.     Frankfort,  1723. 

58  28.     Sea  of  Light.     See  48  15,  n. 

59  10.    formless,  dark. 

"  Dark  with  excessive  bright  thy  skirts  appear 
Yet  dazzle  heaven." 

Par.  Lost,  iii.  380  f . 

59  16.     the  Philosopher    .    .    .    must  station  himself.     "  The 

Second  Religion,  which  founds  itself  on  reverence  for  what  is 
around  us,  we  denominate  the  Philosophical ;  for  the  philosopher 
stations  himself  in  the  middle,  and  must  draw  down  to  him  all  that 
is  higher,  and  up  to  him  all  that  is  lower,  and  only  in  this  medium 
condition  does  he  merit  the  title  of  Wise."  Meister's  Travels, 
cap.  X. 


3  I  4  ^O TES.  [Bk.»  I,  Cap.  X. 

59  22,  23.  Arkwright.  Inventor  of  the  spinning-jenny.  See 
Smiles,  6't'//7/i7/,  pp.  42-45.  N.  Y.,  1862. — Arachne.  A  famous 
needlewoman.  She  was  defeated  in  a  trial  of  skill  by  Minerva  and 
changed  into  a  spider.     See  Lcinpriere. 

60  3.  Wonder.  "  Wonder  is  the  basis  of  worship  ;  the  reign  of 
wonder  is  perennial,  indestructible ;  only  at  certain  seasons  (as  the 
present)  it  is  (for  some  short  season)  i7i  partibiis  hifideliiim.''''  Jour- 
tial,  June  8,  1830.    C.  E.  Z.,  II,  86. 

60  7.  in  partibus  infidelium.  A  term  applied  in  the  Romish 
Church  to  "  A  bishop  consecrated  to  a  see  which  formerly  existed, 
but  which  has  been,  chiefly  through  the  devastations  of  the  follow- 
ers of  Mahomet,  lost  to  Christendom."  Catholic  Dictionary^  N.  Y., 
1884,  under  Bishop.     See  also  60  3,  n. 

60  19.  the  Doctor's.  See  Lane's  Thotisand  and  One  N'ights, 
I,  78  ff.  (London,  1S41);  and  also  ib.  Ill,  ii8ff. 

60  3:2.    logic-chopper. 

How  now  ?  how  now,  chop-logic  ?    .     .     . 
'  Proud  '  and  '  I  thank  you,'  and  again  '  not  proud.' 

Rovieo  aiid  Jtdiet,  iii.  5. 

60  34.  Mechanics'  Institute.  This  form  of  workman's  college 
was  then  in  the  beginning  of  its  bloom-period.  Cp.  The  Princess, 
the  beginning. 

61  1.  Old-Roman  geese.  Rome  was  taken  by  the  Gauls  B.C. 
390,  but  some  of  the  citizens  held  out  in  the  Capitol.  The  Gauls 
attempted  a  surprise,  but  the  defenders  were  aroused  by  the  clamor 
of  the  geese  sacred  to  Juno,  and  the  besiegers  were  beaten  off.  See 
Livy,  v,  47. 

61  12.  Royal  Societies.  See  2  3,  n.  —  Mecanique  Celeste.  See 
1  16,  n. 

61  13.     Hegel's  Philosophy.     See  11  14,  n. 

61  18.  Thou  wilt  have.  "Thou  wilt  have  no  mystery  and 
mysticism  ;  wilt  Hve  in  the  daylight  (rushlight  1)  of  truth,  and  see 
thy  world  and  understand  it.  Nay,  thou  wilt  laugh  at  all  that 
believe  in  a  mystery  ;  to  whom  the  universe  is  an  oracle  and  temple, 
as  well  as  a  kitchen  and  cattle-stall .?  Armer  Ten/el !  Doth  not  thy 
cow  calve,  doth  not  thy  bull  gender  ?  Nay,  peradventure,  dost  not 
thou  thyself  gender  ?  Explain  me  that,  or  do  one  of  two  things  : 
retire  into  private  places  with  thy  foolish  cackle;  or,  what  were 
better,  give  it  up  and  weep,  not  that  the  world  is  mean  and  disen- 
chanted and  prosaic,  but  that   thou   art  vain  and  blind."    Journal, 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  XI.]  PROSPECTIVE.  3 1 5 

June  8,  1830.     C.  E.  Z.,  II,  85  f.;  cp.  also  Essays,  Signs  of  the  Times, 
II,  154. 

61  20.  Attorney  Logic.  "That  mere  faculty  of  logic  which 
belongs  to  '  all  attorneys  and  men  educated  in  Edinburgh.'  "  Essays, 
Novalis,  II,  81. 

61  30.  Armer  Teufel !  Poor  beggar !  Carlyle  bestowed  this 
name  on  Lamb.  See  C.  E.  L.,  II,  215.  — Doth  not  thy  cow.  Job 
xxi.  10,  adapted. 

62  9.  Dilettante.  Carlylese  for  idler.  "The  sin  of  this  age 
is  Dilettantism  ;  the  Whigs  and  all  '  moderate  Tories '  are  the  grand 
Dilettanti.  I  begin  to  feel  less  and  less  of  patience  for  them.  This 
is  no  world  where  a  man  should  stand  trimming  his  whiskers,  look- 
ing on  at  work,  or  touching  it  with  the  point  of  a  gloved  finger. 
Man  sollte  greifen  z2i  t  There  is  more  hope  of  an  Atheist  Utilita- 
rian, of  a  Superstitious  Ultra,  than  of  such  a  lukewarm  withered 
mongrel.  He  would  not  believe  tho'  one  rose  from  the  dead.  He 
is  wedded  to  his  idols,  let  him  alone."  C.-Jour.;  cp.  C  E.  L.,  II, 
92.  Goethe  expresses  in  calmer  fashion  his  dislike  to  Dilettantism. 
Siinwit.  IVerkc,  xiii.  254-270.     Stuttgart,  1873. 

62  8.    an  Elysian  brightness. 

His  demum  exactis,  perfecto  munere  divae, 

Devenere  locos  laetos,  et  amoena  vireta 

Fortunatorum  nemorum,  sedesque  beatas. 

Largior  hie  campos  aether  et  lumine  vestit 

Purpureo. 

/^neid,  vi.  637  ff. 

62  12.    Pandemonian  lava. 

—  Till  on  dry  land 
He  lights  ;  if  it  were  land  that  ever  burned 
With  solid,  as  the  lake  with  liquid  fire. 

Par.  Lost,  i.  227  ff. 

See  also  ib.,  1.  296. 

62  21.     If  I  take.     See  Ps.  cxxxix.  9  ;  not  quoted  exactly. 

64  8.  All  visible  things.  See  Bk.  Ill,  cap.  iii.  The  thought  is 
Goethean.  "  Die  Idee  ist  ewig  und  einzig ;  dass  wir  auch  den 
Plural  brauchen  ist  nicht  wohlgethan.  Alles,  was  wir  gewahr  werden 
und  wovon  wir  reden  konnen,  sind  nur  Manifestationen  der  Idee." 
Maxijnen  u.  Reflexionen,    III. 

64  23.     clothed  with  Authority. 

But  man,  proud  man 
Drest  in  a  little  brief  authority. 

Measure  for  Measure,  ii.  2. 


3i6  NOTES.  [Bk.  I,  Cap.  XI. 

Array  thyself  with  glory  and  beauty.     Job  xl.  lo  ; 
For  thou  hast  fashioned  him  a  marvellous  work 


And  clothed  him  in  the  garment  of  thy  Beauty. 

KoJiig  Ottokar,  Gervian  Playwrights,  Essays,  I,  375. 

As  he  clothed  himself  with  cursing  like  as  with  his  garment.     Ps.  cix. 
18. 

64  29.  with  a  Body.  Thou  hast  clothed  me  with  skin  and  flesh, 
and  hast  fenced  me  with  bones  and  sinews.  Job  x.  11  ;  cp.  2  Cor. 
V.  1-4. 

64  33.  Metaphors.  In  1S22,  Carlyle  was  reading  Milton's  Prose 
works,  and  comments  thus  upon  his  style:  "  As  to  this  metaphori- 
cal talent,  it  is  the  first  characteristic  of  genius  —  tho' not  the  only 
one,  or  an  indispensable  one  ;  see  Alfieri.  It  denotes  an  inward  eye 
quick  to  perceive  the  relations  and  analogies  of  things  ;  a  ready 
memory  to  furnish  them  when  occasion  demands  ;  and  a  sense  of 
propriety  and  beauty  to  select  what  is  best,  from  the  immense  store 
so  furnished.  There  is  far  more  in  it  than  this  :  but  what —  I  have 
not  time  or  power  to  say."  C.-Jonr.,  p.  14.  Carlyle  admires  in 
Milton  the  qualities  for  which  he  himself  is  distinguished.  "  Uu 
gleichst  dem  Geist,  den  du  begreifst." 

65  7.  An  unmetaphorical  style.  "  All  language  but  that  con- 
cerning sensual  objects  is  or  has  been  figurative.  Prodigious  influ- 
ence of  metaphors  !  Never  saw  into  it  till  lately."  Jojtrnal,  Aug. 
5,  1829.     C.  E.  L.,  II,  78. 

65  13.  as  in  my  own  case.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  Carlyle  shows 
that  he  is  conscious  of  his  own  peculiar  powers. 

65  25.     Heavens  and  the  Earth.     Ps.  cii.  25,  26 ;  freely  adapted. 

66  11.  Scottish  Hamburg  Merchant.  It  was  through  Messrs. 
Parish  &  Co.  of  Hamburg  that  the  various  packets  of  books,  etc., 
were  transmitted  between  Goethe  and  Carlyle.  See  G.-Corr.,  30, 
40,  82,  117,  etc.  "The  Tetifelsdrockh  I  instantly  despatched  to 
Hamburg,  to  a  Scottish  merchant  there,  to  whom  there  is  an  allusion 
in  the  Pook  ;  who  used  to  be  xivj  Spcditor  (one  of  the  politest  extant, 
though  totally  a  stranger)  in  my  missions  and  packages  to  and  from 
Weimar."  Carlyle,  Correspondence  with  Emerson,  I,  no.  See  also 
ib.,  Ill,  n. 

66  23.  long-winded  Letter.  This  elaborate  preparation  is 
requisite  to  justify  the  introduction  of  Bk.  II,  which  is  Wotton 
Rein/red,  his  unfinished  novel. 


Bk.  I,  Cap.  XI.]  PROSPECTIVE.  3 1 7 

67  13.  man  is  properly.  Slightly  varied  from  Pope's  line,  "  The 
proper  study  of  mankind  is  man."  Essay  on  Maji,  ii.  2 ;  cp. 
103  34,  n. 

67  21.  By  this  time.  This  entire  paragraph  anticipates  the  love 
story  of  Bk.  II,  and  gives  it  in  outline. 

68  7.  sloughs.  The  Slough  of  Despond.  Pilgrini's  Progress. 
—  Pisgah  hills.     See  Deut.  xxxiv.  1-4. 

68  8.     Hebron.     See  i  Chron.  xxix.  27.     King  David's  residence. 

68  9.  Old-Clothes  Jewry.  His  whimsical  twist  to  Old  Jewry, 
a  well-known  street  in  London  running  off  Cheapside,  formerly  the 
Ghetto,  now  a  resort  of  lawyers.  See  Stow,  A  Survey  of  Londoft, 
p.  271.     Carisbrooke  Library,  London,  1S90.     Cp.  219  11  ff. 

68  14.     fallen  among  thieves.     See  Luke  x.  30. 

68  20.  sympathetic-ink.  Carlyle  met  Dr.  Chalmers  at  Glasgow, 
when  Irving  was  his  assistant  there.  On  one  occasion  he  talked 
earnestly,  for  a  good  while,  on  some  scheme  he  had  for  proving 
Christianity  by  its  visible  fitness  for  human  nature  :  "all  written  in 
us  already,"  he  said,  "as  in  syjnpathetic  ink ;  Bible  awakens  it,  and 
you  can  read."     Rem.,  II,  'jy 

69  3.  fullest  insight.  See  68  29.  —  Paper  Bags.  Emerson  is 
said  to  have  used  such  bags  to  hold  detached  thoughts  on  separate 
slips  of  paper,  which  were  afterwards  embodied  in  his  essays. 

69  27.  *P.  P.  Clerk  of  this  Parish.'  Memoirs  of.  By  Jno. 
Arbuthnot  (1675-1735),  in  ridicule  of  Burnet's  History  of  My  Own 
Times  ;  a  chronicling  of  very  small  beer.  "  Alas,  all  Universal  His- 
tory is  but  a  sort  of  Parish  History;  which  the  '  P.  P.  Clerk  of  this 
Parish,'  member  of  'our  Alehouse  Club'  (instituted  for  what 
'  Psalmody'  is  in  request  there),  puts  together,  —  in  such  sort  as  his 
fellow-members  will  praise."  Essays,  On  History  Again,  III,  248. 
See  also  Lett.,  245  f.,  n. 

69  31.     confusion.     See  21  25,  n. 

69  33.     marked  bezahlt.     Cp.  113  31. 

70  2.  Street- Advertisement.  Cp.  141  20.  "  Much  also  did  the 
Quintus  collect:  he  had  a  fine  Abnanac  Collection,  a  Catechism  and 
Pamphlet  Collectiofi  ;  2i\&o  2i  Collection  of  Advertisements,  which  he 
began,  is  not  so  incomplete  as  you  most  frequently  see  such 
things."     Qiiintus  Fixlein,  C. -Trans.,  II,  116. 

70  4.    Clothes- Volume  .  .  .  Chaos.     Cp.  30  2-9. 
70  24.     medley  of  high.     The  entire  passage  to  the  close  of  the 
paragraph  is  built  up  of  allusions  to  Paradise  Lost,  ii.  S90  to  end. 
70  30.     Pontiff.     Pontifex  (pons  +  facere),  bridge-maker.     Skeat, 


3i8  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  I. 

Etytn.  Diet.  Pontiff,  a  member  of  the  highest  priestly  college  at 
Rome,  in  the  first  place  probably  for  the  building  or  maintenance  of 
a  bridge.  The  title  has  been  assumed  by  the  Bishops  of  Rome. 
Cp.  24  31. 

71  15.  transplanting  foreign  Thought.  Carlyle's  own  work. 
He  drops  the  jest  here  and  is  thoroughly  in  earnest. 

72  14.  transit  out  of  Invisibility.  "  In  truth  a  man  must  never 
have  reflected  on  the  Creation-moment  ...  if  he  does  not  view 
with  philosophic  reverence  a  woman  whose  thread  of  life  a  secret 
all-wondrous  Hand  is  spinning  to  a  second  thread,  and  who  veils 
within  her  the  transition  from  Nothingness  to  Existence,  from 
Eternity  to  Time."     Richter,  Qiiintiis  Eixlein,  C. -Trans,  II,  191. 

72  17.     Entepfuhl.     Duckpond.     Ecclefechan.     Cp.  ]12  2lf. 

72  21-23.  Grenadier  Sergeant  .  .  .  halbert.  Sergeant  in  the 
grenadier  or  crack  company.  Sergeants  in  the  line  regiments  of 
that  day  carried  halberts  or  pole-axes  instead  of  muskets. 

72  22.  Frederick  the  Great.  See  Macaulay's  Essays,  Frederic  the 
Great,  and  Carlyle's  history. 

73  1.     Cincinnatus-like.     Lizy,  iii.  26. 

73  7.  Rossbach.  Town  in  Saxony  where  Frederick  completely 
defeated  a  French  force  double  his  own,  Nov.  5,  1757. 

73  14.  Kunersdorf.  In  August  1759,  Frederick  was  defeated  at 
this  place  by  the  Russians  and  Austrians. 

73  15.     Desdemona. 

She  lov'd  me  for  the  dangers  I  had  pass'd, 
And  I  lov'd  her  that  she  did  pity  them. 

Othello,  i.  3. 

73  22.  Cicero  .  .  .  Cid.  Types  of  eloquence  and  courage.  Ruy 
Diaz  of  BiVar,  the  Cid  (1040  circa-1099)  is  the  national  hero  of 
Spain.  The  earliest  Spanish  poetry  relates  his  exploits.  See  Tick- 
nor.  History  of  Spanish  LiteratJire  vol.  I,  pp.  12-23.     N.  Y.,  1849. 

73  25.  Biisching's  Geography.  "Anton  Friedrich  Biisching, 
the  establisher  of  the  political-statistical  method  of  geography.  His 
principal  work,  N'ciie  Erdbeschreibimg,  of  which  he  has  written  him- 
self the  first  eleven  volumes,  —  that  is  to  say,  Europe  and  a  part 
of  Asia,  in  the  years  1754-92  —  was  continued  after  his  death." 
Z.  W.  C,  344,  n.     See  also  C. -Trans.,  II,  187. 

73  26.     Rossbach.     See  above,  73  7,  n. 

73  27.  camisade  of  Hochkirch.  Camisade  is  a  night  attack, 
when  the  assailants  wear  shirts  over  their  uniforms  in  order  to  pre- 
vent confusion.     In  the  battle   of   Hochkirch,   General   Daun   sur- 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  I.]  GENESIS.  3ig 

prised  Frederick  the  Great,  Oct.  14,  1758.  See  Carlyle,  Frederick 
the  Great,  Bk.  XVIII,  cap.  xiv.  for  a  most  graphic  account  of  it. 

73  29.     house-mother.     Germ.  Hausmutter. 

75  11.  Pitt  Diamond.  "  The  most  perfect  brilliant  in  Europe." 
It  was  brought  from  India  by  Mr.  Pitt,  Governor  of  Madras,  in 
1702,  and  sold  to  the  Regent  duke  of  Orleans  for  ;^  130,000. 

75  12.  Hapsburg  Regalia.  To  preserve  consistently  the  Ger- 
man coloring  of  the  tale. 

75  13.  gold  Friedrichs.  Friedrich  d'or,  a  Prussian  gold  coin 
worth  16^.  or  32 j.  and  a  few  pence,  according  as  it  was  'single'  or 
'  double.' 

76  2.     Diogenes.      See  5  13,  n. 

76  5.     Weissnichtwo.     See  5  13,  n. — Things  in  General.     See 

14  28. 

76  33.  sudden  whirls.  The  mystery  of  Teufelsdrockh's  parent- 
age has  no  further  bearing  on  the  story.  The  incident  is  apparently 
introduced  solely  for  the  purpose  of  making  this  '  sudden  whirl ' 
and  pointing  out  how  man  is  surrounded  by  mystery  from  the  very 
outset. 

77  5.    thy  true  Beginning. 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  : 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting. 

And  Cometh  from  afar  : 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness. 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 

But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God,  who  is  our  home. 

Intimations  of  Immortality,  v. 

77  26.    like  an  Ostrich.     See  Job  xxxix.  13-17. 

78  5.  Devil.  The  slanderer,  from  Sia/SdXXw,  to  accuse.  "  Your 
arch  fault-finder  is  the  devil ;  it  is  no  one's  trade  but  his  to  dwell 
on  negations,  to  impugn  the  darkness  and  overlook  the  light ;  and 
out  of  the  glorious  All  itself  to  educe  not  beauty  but  deformity." 
Z.  W.  €.,  Wotton  Reinfred,  92. 

78  9.  Walter  Shandy.  The  whimsical,  disputatious  father  of 
Tristram  Shandy  in  Sterne's  novel.  "  His  opinion  in  this  matter 
was,  That  there  was  a  strange  kind  of  magic  bias,  which  good  or 
bad  names,  as  he  called  them,  irresistibly  impressed  upon  our  charac- 
ters and  conduct."  Tristram  Shandy,  Ijk.  I,  cap.  xix.  "  It  might 
be  that,  as,  according   to  Tristram   Shandy,   clothes ;    according  to 


32 O  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  II. 

Walter  Shandy  and  Lavater,  proper  names  exert  an  influence  on 
men,  appellatives  would  do  still  more."  Quintus  Fixleiti,  C.-Trans., 
II,  129.  "  My  first  favourite  books  had  been  Hudibras  and  Tristram 
Shandy."     C.  E.  L.,  I,  411. 

78  17.     invisible  seed-grain.     See  Matt.  xiii.  31. 

78  21.  Trismegistus.  "  This  Trismegistus,  continued  my  father, 
drawing  his  leg  back,  and  turning  to  my  uncle  Toby,  —  was  the 
greatest  (Toby)  of  all  earthly  beings  ;  —  he  was  the  greatest  king, — 
the  greatest  law-giver,  —  the  greatest  philosopher,  —  and  the  greatest 
priest ;  —  and  engineer,  —  said  my  uncle  Toby."  Tristram  Shandy, 
IV,  cap.  xi.  Ilermes  Trismegistus,  Milton's  "thrice-great  Hermes" 
(//  Penseroso,  1.  88),  the  name  given  to  the  sacred  writings  of  the 
Egyptians  by  Neo-Platonists.  Supposed  to  be  a  king  contemporary 
with  Moses.     See  Cudworth,  Intellectual  Systein,  I,  540-543.    Lond., 

1845. 
78  23.    Adam's  first  task.     See  Gen.  ii.  19. 

78  29.  Call  one  a  thief.  The  nearest  approach  to  this  that  I 
can  discover  is,  "  Give  a  dog  a  bad  name,  and  it's  charity  to  hang 
him." 

79  3.  sixth  Sense  of  Hunger.  "  But  in  the  digestive  half-hour 
after  meat,  when  the  sixth  sense,  that  of  hunger  and  thirst,  no  longer 
occupied  the  soul,"  Musaeus,  Stumme  Liebe  ;  C-Trans.,  I,  37. 

79  16.  Gneschen.  The  usual  way  to  make  pet-names  in  German 
is  to  take  the  first  part  of  the  word  and  add  '  chen '  (Eng.  kin,  as  in 
manikin).    In  this  case  the  last  part  is  taken.    Cp.  82  26,  '  Mankin.' 

SO  12.  Timbuctoo  .  .  .  not  safe.  '  Tombuctoo  '  in  Eraser,  and 
so  spelled  by  Mungo  Park.  It  is  more  than  a  coincidence  that  a 
poem  with  this  title,  written  by  Alfred  Tennyson,  an  undergraduate 
of  Trinity,  won  the  Chancellor's  Medal  at  the  Cambridge  Com- 
mencement in  1829.     Cp.  122  22,  n. 

80  25.  prophet,  priest.  A  reminiscence  of  the  Shorter  Cate- 
chism, Quest.  18. 

81  4-5.     down-rushing  .  .  .  mountain. 

The  moanings  of  the  homeless  sea, 

The  sound  of  streams  that,  swift  or  slow, 
Draw  down  the  iEonian  hills  and  sow 

The  dust  of  continents  to  be. 

hi  Meinoriam,  xxxv.  3. 

81  12.  Arnauld.  Antoine  (161 2-1 694),  French  theologian  and 
philosopher,  the  chief  of  the  Port-Royalists,  opponent  of  the 
Jesuits.     The  protest  was  made  to  his  friend,  Pierre  Nicole. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  II.]  IDYLLIC.  321 

81  14.  Nepenthe.  "  A  drug  to  lull  all  pain  and  anger,  and  bring 
forgetfulness  of  every  sorrow.  Whoso  should  drink  a  draught 
thereof,  when  it  is  mingled  in  the  bowl,  on  that  day  he  would  let  no 
tear  fall  down  his  cheeks,  not  though  his  father  and  mother  died." 
Odyssey  (Butcher  and  Lang),  iv,  219.  See  Comtis,  1.  675. — 
Pyrrhus.  A  king  of  Epirus,  318-272  B.C.  See  Plutarch's  Lives. 
Cp.  131  14,  n. 

81  19.    everywhere  are.     Carlyle  wrote  '  is.' 

81  31.  Kuhbach.  Cow  Creek  or  Brook.  One  of  the  tributaries 
of  the  Annan  was  the  Milk. 

82  2-3.  Agora.  Market-place  in  Greek  cities,  the  most  famous 
being  in  Athens.  — Campus  Martius.  The  field  of  Mars.  A  large 
field  outside  Rome  used  for  athletic  and  military  exercises. 

82  4.     the  old  men.     Cp.  The  Deserted  Village,  11.  13-32. 
82  29.     '  brave  old  Linden.'     See  81  34. 

82  26.    the  Mankin  feels. 

See  at  liis  feet  some  little  plan  or  chart, 
Some  fragment  from  his  dream  of  human  life, 
Shaped  by  himself  with  newly  learned  art ; 
A  wedding  or  a  festival, 
A  mourning  or  a  funeral ; 

And  this  hath  now  his  heart, 
And  unto  this  he  frames  his  song. 

Then  will  he  fit  his  tongue 
To  dialogues  of  business,  love,  or  strife. 

Intimations  of  Immortality,  vii. 

83  4.  one  and  indivisible.  For  the  fashion  of  the  garment 
(called  **  skeletons  ")  see  R.  Caldecott's  illustrations  to  Jackanapes. 
Cp.  50  13,  n. 

84  9.  Helvetius.  Claude  Adrien  (1715-1771),  one  of  the  Ency- 
clopaedists. De  V Esprit  (17  58)  was  intended  to  rival  Montesquieu's 
Esprit  des  Lois,  and  its  heterodox  opinions  gave  it  a  temporary  and 
factitious  importance.  This  doctrine  is  expounded  in  his  posthu- 
mous work  (1772),  De  Vhomme,  de  ses  factdtes  i7itellectuelles  et  de  son 
education.     Diderot  refuted  it. 

84  15.  double-barrelled  Game-preservers.  Carlylese,  to  signify 
"people  who  preserve  game  and  shoot  it  vv^ith  double-barrelled 
guns."  Cp.  101  14  ;  the  .sneer  at  the  end  of  Bk.  Ill,  cap.  iv.,  the 
epitaph,  Bk.  II,  cap.  iv.  "A  man  with  ^"200,000  a  year  eats  the 
whole  fruit  of  6,666  men's  labour  thro'  a  year  ;  for  you  can  get  a 
stout  spademan  to  work  and  maintain  himself  for  that  sum  of  /"30. 
Thus  we  have   private   individuals  whose   wages  are   equal   to   the 


32  2  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  II. 

wages  of  7  or  8  thousand  other  individuals.  What  do  these  highly 
beneficed  individuals  do  to  society  for  their  wages  ?  Kill  Partridges. 
Can  this  last .''  No,  by  the  soul  that  is  in  man,  it  cannot  and  will 
not  and  shall  not !  "  C-Jonr.,  June  30,  1830  ;  cp.  C.  E.  L.,  II,  84. 
Cp.  Tennyson's  scorn  of  an  idle  aristocracy. 

These  old  pheasant-lords, 
These  partridge-breeders  of  a  thousand  years, 
Who  had  mildew'd  in  their  thousands,  doing  nothing. 

Ayhner^s  Field. 

And  Kingsley,  Yeast,  especially  cap.  xi.  Sidney  Smith,  Edin  Rev. 
Oct.  1823,  pp.  48-54- 

85  13.  Doubtless,  as  childish  sports.  "  He  .  .  .  stood  by  the 
peasants  at  their  work  and  listened  eagerly  to  their  words,  which, 
rude  as  they  might  be,  were  the  words  of  grown  men,  and  awoke  in 
him  forecastings  of  a  distant  world.  Old  Stephen  in  particular,  the 
family  gardener,  steward,  ploughman,  majordomo  and  factotum,  he 
could  have  hearkened  to  for  ever.  Stephen  had  travelled  much  in 
his  time  and  seen  the  manner  of  many  men  ;  noting  noteworthy 
things,  which  his  shrewd  mind  wanted  not  skill  to  combine  in  its 
^own  simplicity  into  a  consistent  philosophy  of  life."  Z.  W.  C, 
Wotton  Reinfred,  26. 

85  19.  Much-enduring.  TroXi^rXas,  the  constant  Homeric  epithet 
for  Ulysses.     Cp.  Essays,  Dr.  Francia,  IV,  341. 

86  9-11.    Wilhelm  Tell  .  .  .  Any  road, 

Denn  jede  Strasse  fiihrt  ans  End'  der  Welt. 

iv.  3,  2619. 

The  drama  (1804)  depicts  the  liberation  of  Switzerland  and  the 
career  of  the  national  hero. 

87  10.  Ormuz  bazaars.  A  city  built  first  on  the  mainland  and 
then  on  an  island,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Red  Sea,  famous  as  a  dis- 
tributing centre  of  the  Indian  trade  with  Persia  during  the  Middle 
Ages. 

87  11.     LagO  Maggiore.     The  largest  lake  in  Italy,  partly  in  the 
Swiss  canton,  Ticino. 
87  15.     confounding  the  confusion.     See  21  25,  n. 

87  33.     Prospero's  Island.     See  Tempest,  especially  Act  iv.  sc.  i. 

88  10.    ring  of  necessity. 

Ein  kleiner  Ring 
Begranzt  unser  Leben, 
Und  viele  Geschlechter 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  1 11. J  PEDAGOGY.  323 

Reihen  sich  dauerad 
An  ihres  Daseins 
Unendliche  Kette. 

Goethe,  Grenzen  der  Metischfieit . 

Cp.  Carlyle,  Meistcr's  Apprenticeship,  bk.  vi.  p.  303.      Lond.,  1868. 
89  2.     root  of  bitterness.     See  Heb.  xii.  15. 

89  20.  my  kind  Mother.  "  I  esteem  it  a  great  blessing  that  I 
was  born,  that  I  am  a  denizen  of  God's  Universe  ;  and  surely  the 
greatest  of  all  earthly  blessings  that  I  was  born  of  parents  who  were 
religious,  who  from  the  first  studied  to  open  my  eyes  to  the  Highest 
and  train  me  up  in  the  ways  wherein  I  should  go."     Lett.,  294. 

"  In  her  secluded  life,  for  like  her  husband  she  was  visited  by  few 
except  the  needy  and  distressed,  such  feelings  gathered  strength  ; 
were  reduced  to  principles  of  action,  and  came  at  last  to  pervade  her 
whole  conduct,  most  of  all  her  conduct  to  her  sole  surviving  child. 
She  never  said  to  him  :  '  Be  great,  be  learned,  be  rich'; '  but,  '  Be 
good  and  holy,  seek  God  and  thou  shalt  find  Him.' "  L.  W.  €., 
IVotton  Reinfred,  20. 

90  1.     Holy  of  Holies.     See  Exod.  xxvi.  -^t,,  34. 

90  7.  two-and-thirty  quarters.  The  panel  showing  the  number 
of  times  the  family  arms  had  been  divided,  which  would  indicate  a 
long  pedigree  and  many  distinguished  alliances. 

90  11.     indivisible  case.     See  83  4,  n. 

90  27.     his  own  words.     See  88  18;  cp.  91  21. 

91  5.  Hindoo  character.  Carlyle  has  in  mind  the  Hindoo  mild- 
ness, patience  and  capacity  for  the  contemplative  life. 

91  10.  For  the  shallow-sighted.  "  The  chief  elements  of  my 
little  destiny  have  all  along  lain  deep  below  view  or  surmise,  and 
never  will  or  can  be  known  to  any  son  of  Adam.  .  .  .  The  con- 
fused world  never  understood  nor  will  understand  me  and  my  poor 
affairs."    Jotcrnal,  Dec.  29,  1848.     C.  L.  L.,  I,  i  f. 

91  21.     the  earliest  tools.     See  90  27  ;  cp.  35  23. 

91  24.  Reading  he  'cannot  remember.'  "To  read  and  write 
she  (his  mother)  had  herself  taught  him  ;  the  former  talent  he  had 
acquired  so  early  that  it  seemed  less  an  art  than  a  faculty,  for  he 
could  not  recollect  his  ever  having  wanted  it  or  learned  it."  L.  IV.  C, 
Wotton  Reinfred,  21.  "  My  mother  (writes  Carlyle,  in  a  series  of 
brief  notes  upon  his  early  life)  had  taught  me  reading.  I  never 
remember  when."     C.  E.  L.,  I,  16.     See  also  Rem.,  I,  45. 

91  26.  had  it  by  nature.  "Dogberry.  —  To  be  a  well-favoured 
man  is  the  gift  of  fortune,  but  to  write  and  read  comes  by  nature." 
Much  Ado,  iii.  3. 


324  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  III. 

92  17.     Suppers  on  the  Orchard-wall.     See  83  10  ff. 

92  20.  It  struck  me  much.  "  lOarth,  sea  and  air  are  open  to  us 
here  as  well  as  anywhere.  7'he  water  of  Milk  was  flowing  through 
its  simple  valley  as  early  as  the  brook  Siloa,  and  poor  Repentance 
Hill  is  as  old  as  Caucasus  itself."  Letter  to  J.  Welsh,  1825.  C.  E.  L., 
1,310.  "This  streamlet,  nameless  except  to  a  few  herdsmen,  was 
meted  out  by  the  hand  of  the  Omnipotent  as  well  as  the  great 
ocean  ;  it  is  as  ancient  as  the  Flood,  and  was  murmuring  through 
its  solitude  when  the  ships  of  i^neas  ascended  the  Tiber,  or  Siloa's 
Brook  was  flowing  fast  by  the  Oracle  of  God."     L.  IV.  C,  Wotton 

Reinf?'ed,  71  f. 

To  chant  thy  birth,  thou  hast 
No  meaner  Poet  than  the  whistling  Blast, 
And  Desolation  is  thy  Patron-saint ! 
She  guards  thee,  ruthless  Power  !  who  would  not  spare 
Those  mighty  forests,  once  the  bison's  screen, 
•  Where  stalked  the  huge  deer  to  his  shaggy  lair 
Through  paths  and  alleys  roofed  with  darkest  green  ; 
Thousands  of  years  before  the  silent  air 
Was  pierced  by  whizzing  shaft  of  hunter  keen  ! 

Wordsworth,  So7mcts  to  tJic  River  Diiddon,  ii. 

91  21.     Kuhbach.     See  81  31,  n.  and  92  20,  n. 

92  25.     Joshua  forded.     See  Joshua  iii.  14-17. 

92  26.  Caesar  swam.  "  Alexandriae  circa  oppugnationem  pontis 
eruptione  hostium  subita  conpulsus  in  scapham,  pluribus  eodem 
praecipitantibus,  cum  desilisset  in  mare,  nando  per  ducentos  passus 
evasit  ad  proximam  navem,  elata  laeva,  ne  libelli  quos  tenebat  made- 
fierent,  paludamentum  mordicus  trahens,  ne  spolio  poteretur  hostis." 
Suetonius,  De  Vit.  Caes.,  I,  64. 

93  12.  Hinterschlag.  "  Smite-behind,"  humorous  for  Annan. 
Cp.  C.  E.  Z.,  I,  15.  "He  took  me  down  to  Annan  Academ.y,  on 
the  Whitsunday  morning,  1806  ;  I  trotting  by  his  side  in  the  way 
alluded  to  in  Teufelsdt-'dckh.  It  was  a  bright  morning,  and  to  me 
full  of  moment ;  of  fluttering,  boundless  Hopes,  saddened  by  part- 
ing with  Mother,  with  Home ;  and  which  afterwards  were  cruelly 
disappointed."     Rem.,  I,  46;  cp.  C.  E.  Z.,  I,  17. 

93  33.  His' schoolfellows.  "Probably  it  was  in  1808,  April  or 
May,  after  College  time,  that  I  first  saw  Irving :  I  had  got  over  my 
worst  miseries  in  that  doleful  and  hateful  '  Academy '  life  of  mine 
(which  lasted  three  years  in  all);  had  begun,  in  spite  of  precept,  to 
strike  about  me,  to  defend  myself  by  hand  and  voice."  Rem.,  II, 
16.  "  Poor  Wotton  had  a  sorry  time  of  it,  in  this  tumultuous, 
cozening,  brawling,  club-law  commonwealth :    he  had    not   friends 


Bk.  11,  Cap.  111. J  PEDAGOGY.  225 

among  them,  or  if  any  elder  boy  took  his  part,  feeling  some  touch 
of  pity  for  his  innocence  and  worth,  it  was  only  for  a  moment,  and 
his  usual  purgatory,  perhaps  aggravated  by  his  late  patron,  returned 
upon  him  with  but  greater  bitterne.ss.  They  flouted  him,  they  beat 
him,  they  jeered  and  tweaked  and  tortured  him  by  a  thousand  cun- 
ning arts,  to  all  which  he  could  only  answer  with  his  tears  ;  so  that 
his  very  heart  was  black  within  him."  L.  IV.  C,  Wotton  Reinfrcd, 
2ii. 

94  15.     Passivity.     See  88  20,  91  5,  n. 

94  17.  He  wept  often.  "  Young  Carlyle  was  mocked  for  his 
moody  ways,  laughed  at  for  his  love  of  solitude,  and  called  '  Tom  the' 
Tearful '  because  of  his  habit  of  crying."  Nichol,  Thomas  Carlyle, 
p.  18,  E.  M.  L.  Series.  "  For  he  was  a  quiet,  pensive  creature,  that 
loved  all  things,  his  shelty,  the  milk-cow,  nay  the  very  cat,  ungrate- 
ful termagant  though  she  was  ;  and  so  shy  and  soft  withal,  that  he 
generally  passed  for  cowardly,  and  his  tormentors  had  named  him 
'weeping  Wotton,'  and  marked  him  down  as  a  proper  enough  book- 
worm, but  one  without  a  particle  of  spirit.  However,  in  this  latter 
point  they  sometimes  overshot  themselves  and  the  boldest  and  tallest 
of  the  house  have  quailed  before  the  '  weeping  Wotton,'  when  thor- 
oughly provoked,  for  his  fury  while  it  lasted  was  boundless,  his 
little  face  gleamed  like  a  thunderbolt,  and  no  fear  of  earthly  or 
unearthly  thing  could  hold  him  from  the  heart  of  his  enemy.  But 
the  sway  of  this  fire-eyed  genius  was  transient  as  the  spark  of  the 
flint."  Z.  W.  €.,  Wotton  Rein/red,  23  f.  "  Mythically  true  is  what 
'  Sartor'  says  of  my  schoolfellows,  and  not  half  the  truth.  Unspeak- 
able is  the  damage  and  defilement  I  got  out  of  those  coarse 
unguided  tyrannous  cubs,  especially  till  I  revolted  against  them  and 
gave  stroke  for  stroke,  as  my  pious  mother  in  her  great  love  of 
peace  and  of  my  best  interests,  spiritually  chiefly,  had  imprudently 
forbidden  me  to  do."     C.  E.  L.,  I,  17  f.     See  also  ib.,  I5f. 

94  24.  Rights  of  Man.  An  allusion  to  the  famous  'declara- 
tion' promulgated  by  the  French  Constituent  Assembly,  1789. 

94  30.  his  Greek  and  Latin.  "  Sartor  is  not  to  be  trusted  in 
details.  Greek  consisted  of  the  Alphabet  mainly.  Hebrew  is  a 
German  entity.  Nobody  in  that  region  except  old  Mr.  Johnstone 
could  have  read  a  sentence  of  it  to  save  his  life.  I  did  get  to  read 
Latin  and  French  with  fluency  —  Latin  quantity  was  left  a  frightful 
chaos,  and  I  had  to  learn  it  afterwards.  Some  geometry,  algebra, 
arithmetic  thoroughly  well,  vague  outlines  of  geography,  I  did 
learn."     C.  E.  L.,  I,  17. 


326  NOTES.  [Rk.  II,  Cap.  III. 

95  18.  Gerund-grinder.  Carlylese  for  dry  pedantic  grammarian. 
He  is  fond  of  thi.s  figure.     Cp.  102,  10  ff. 

95  19.  manufactured  at  NUrnberg.  "  With  no  more  life  than 
the  Freethinkers'  model  in  Martinus  Scriblerus,  the  Nuremberg 
man,  who  operated  by  a  combination  of  pipes  and  levers,  and  though 
he  could  breathe  and  digest  perfectly,  and  even  reason  as  well  as 
most  country  parsons,  was  made  of  wood  and  leather."  Introduc- 
tions to  Gerjnan  Romance,  Richter  (1827);  Essays,  I,  448,  Appen- 
dix. "  Man  himself  is  but  a  more  cunning  chemico-mechanical  com- 
bination, such  as  in  the  progress  of  discovery  we  may  hope  to  see 
manufactured  at  Soho."  L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  145.  See 
also  Essays,  Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  144. 

95  32.  the  Hodman.  "  Till  one  knows  that  he  cannot  be  a 
Mason,  why  should  he  publicly  hire  himself  as  a  Ilodman  }  "  Let- 
ter to  Goethe,  Aug.  31,  1830;  G.-Corr.,  209.  "They  are  the 
hodmen  of  the  intellectual  edifice,  who  have  got  upon  the  wall  and 
will  insist  on  building  as  if  they  were  masons."  C.-Jour.,  1829. 
C.  E.  L.,  II,  80.     This  phrase  is  Fichtean  ;  see  Essays,  I,  63. 

96  19.  pale  kingdoms.  Ditis  profundi  pallida  regna.  Lucret. 
i.  456. 

97  3.  ye  loved  ones.  "  There  is  nothing  wanting  but  deepest 
sleep,  where  there  were  no  dreams  to  trouble  me.  Ere  long  I  shall 
find  it  in  my  mother's  bosom."     L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  11. 

97  6.    monster-bearing  desert.     Cp.  104  13. 

97  18.  Henry  the  Fowler.  Henry  I.,  Emperor  of  Germany, 
876-936. 

98  11.  so  chaotic.  Carlyle's  device  to  avoid  being  tied  down  to 
any  regular  plan.     Cp.  29  25. 

98  15.  Sibylline.  "  It  was  usual  in  the  Sibyl  to  write  her 
prophecies  on  leaves,  which  she  placed  at  the  entrance  of  her  cave, 
and  it  required  particular  care  in  such  as  consulted  her  to  take  up 
these  leaves  before  they  were  dispersed  by  the  wind,  as  their  mean- 
ing then  became  incomprehensible."  Lemprih-e.  See  ^71.  iii. 
445  ff.  "Thus  all  things  in  her  were  like  Sibyl's  leaves:  her 
opinions,  purposes,  moods,  at  the  breath  of  every  accident,  were 
in  continual  flux  and  reflux."     Z.  IV.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  162. 

98  16.     Programs.     See  14  33,  n. 

98  28.     dead  vocables.     See  95  15. 

99  10.     so  questionable. 

Thou  com'st  in  such  a  questionable  shape. 

Hcnnlet,  i.  4. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  III.]  PEDAGOGY.  327 

99  21.  University.  Edinburgh.  This  passage  represents  Car- 
lyle's  feelings  at  the  time.  See  C.  E.  Z.,  I,  25  f.  ;  cp.  Tennyson's 
sonnet  on  Cambridge.  He  afterwards  showed  more  affection  to 
his  alma  mater.  Among  the  most  significant  and  noble  words  he 
ever  penned  are  passages  in  his  address  to  the  Edinburgh  students 
on  being  made  Lord  Rector  in  1S66,  and  the  Deed  of  Craigenputtoch 
to  the  University.     See  Rem.,  I,  Appen. 

99  33.     When  the  blind.     See  Matt.  xv.  14. 

100  6.  as  they  listed.  The  same  complaint  occurs  in  Wotton 
Reinfred.  "It  was  a  university  in  which  the  great  principle  of 
spiritual  liberty  was  admitted  in  its  broadest  sense,  and  nature  was 
left  not  only  without  misguidance,  but  without  any  guidance  at  all." 
Z.  W.  C,  28 ;  cp.  104  33. 

100  19.  Gullible,  however.  Carlyle  made  this  discovery  early. 
In  a  letter  to  Mitchell,  March  31,  181 7,  he  criticises  the  new  doc- 
trine of  phrenology,  and  concludes,  "  Si  populus  vult  decipi,  dici- 
piatur,"  which  is  probably  taken  from  J.  Eeattie,  Essay  on  Truth, 
p.  381.     Lond.,  1820.     E,  Lett.,  46  ;  cp.  102  .3. 

100  26.    Puffery.     See  11  1,  n. 

101  14.     Game-Preserver.     See  84  15,  n. 

101  33.     imagination  of  meat. 

Kath.     Go,  get  thee  gone,  thou  false  deluding  slave,     [Beats  hhii.l 
That  feed'st  me  with  the  very  name  of  meat. 

Taming  0/  the  Shreiu,  iv.  3. 

102  21.  Progress  of  the  Species.  All  watchwords  of  the  opti- 
mist philosophy  of  the  day. 

102  25.  crepiren.  Used  only  of  animals  ;  "  like  the  beasts  that 
perish." 

103  8-9.  Salamanca  University.  Famous  as  a  school  of  theology 
in  the  Middle  Ages  and  till  the  middle  of  the  17th  century.  In  the 
1 6th  century  it  had  from  6000  to  8000  students  ;  now,  there  are  not 
more  than  400. 

103  9.  Sybaris  city.  One  of  the  earliest  Grecian  colonies  in 
Italy  on  the  Tarentine  gulf,  famous  for  the  luxury  of  its  inhabitants. 
See  Herod,  vi.  127,  note  on  Smindyrides ;  (Rawlinson.) 

103  10.  Castle  of  Indolence.  Didactic  poem  in  Spenserian 
stanza,  by  James  Thomson  ;    published  1748. 

103  17.     The  hungry  young. 


The  hungry  sheep  look  up  and  are  not  fed 

But  swoln  with  wind,  and  the  rank  mist  they  draw 

Rot  inwardly. 


Lycidas,  125  fif. 


328  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  III. 

'*  Should  a  wise  man  utter  vain  knowledge,  and  fill  his  belly  with  the 
east  wind  ?  "     Job  xv.  2. 

103  26.  renommiren.  German  student  slang.  Zacharia  wrote  a 
poem,  Z>fc'r  A'^w^ww/'j-/,  published  in  1741.  The  hero  is  Raufbold, 
a  bully. 

103  29.  fishing-up  more  books.  "He  was  left  to  choose  his 
own  society  and  form  his  own  habits,  and  had  unlimited  com- 
mand of  reading.  What  a  wild  world  rose  before  him,  as  he  read, 
and  felt,  and  saw,  with  as  yet  unworn  avidity  !  "  L.  W.  C,  Wottoii 
Reinfred,  28. 

103  34.  as  man.  Cp.  67  13,  n.  "  A  few  words  from  Herr  Pro- 
fessor Teufelsdrockh,  if  they  help  to  set  this  preliminary  matter  in  a 
clearer  light,  may  be  worth  translating  here.  Let  us  first  remark 
with  him,  however,  *  how  wonderful  in  all  cases,  great  or  little,  is 
the  importance  of  man  to  man.'"     Essays,  Goethe's  Works,  III,  159. 

104  15.  Doubt.  Carlyle  was  intended  for  the  ministry,  and 
actually  began  to  study  theology.  He  gave  up  the  project,  how- 
ever, because  he  could  not  believe  as  was  required.  See  Rem., 
I,  47;  II,  39,  90.  C.  E.  L.,  I,  54,  67.  "  Who  knows  not  the  agonies 
of  doubt  ?  What  heart  not  of  stone  can  endure  to  abide  with  them  ? 
Wotton's  was  a  heart  of  flesh,  and  of  the  softest ;  it  was  torn  and 
bleeding,  but  he  could  not  pause  ;  for  a  voice  from  the  depths  of 
his  nature  called  to  him,  as  he  loved  truth  to  persevere.  He  studied 
the  sceptical  writers  of  his  own  country,  above  all,  the  modern 
literature  of  France.  Here  at  length  a  light  rose  upon  him,  not  the 
pure  sunlight  of  former  days,  but  a  red  fierce  glare,  as  by  degrees 
his  doubt  settled  in  utter  negation."     L.  IV.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  32. 

104  31.     with  new  healing.     Malachi  iv.  2,  adapted. 

105  14.  Profession  of  Law.  An  autobiographic  fact.  Carlyle 
attended  Hume's  lectures  on  law  in  1S19.  See  E.  Lett.,  119,  121, 
123,135,144-  C.E.L.,1,  56,  85.  "By  his  counsel  Wotton  had 
meditated  various  professions  ;  that  of  law  he  had  even  for  a  time 
attempted."     Z.  IV.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  42. 

105  22.  Towgood.  The  name  is  not  a  coinage  :  an  essay  on  the 
Great  Rebellion  was  published  by  the  Rev.  M.  Towgood,  1748.  It 
is  borne  also  by  a  well-known  London  paper-maker.  This  character 
is  supposed  to  be  Charles  Buller,  to  whom  Carlyle  w^as  private 
tutor.  He  is  memorable  to  Canadians  for  drawing  up  the  famous 
Durham  report,  which  did  so  much  to  give  us  representative  govern- 
ment. See  "  Carlyle  and  the  Rose-goddess,"  by  George  Strachey. 
Nineteenth     Centiiry.,    Sept.     1892.       Carlyle    was    fond    of    him. 


Bk  II,  Cap.  IV.]        GETTING    UNDER    WAY.  329 

"  Friends  of  mine,  in  a  fine  frank  way,  beyond  what  I  could  be 
thought  to  merit,  he,  Arthur  and  all  the  Family,  till  death  parted 
us."  Rem.,  II,  105.  His  fondness  for  boxing  is  mentioned  both  by 
Irving  and  Carlyle.     C.  E.  Z.,  I,  145,  and  Re7n..,  II,  103. 

105  24.  the  interior  parts.  A  common  phrase  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  e.g.,  "Travels  through  the  interior  parts  of  America, 
United  States  and  Canada,  in  a  series  of  letters  by  an  Officer." 
1791. 

105  25.     Zahdarm.     German  translation  of  "Toughgut." 

105  32.  silent  fury.  Byron  used  the  phrase  of  himself.  See 
Moore's  Life,  sub  ajtn.  1793. 

106  17.    Attorney  Logic.     See  61  20,  n. 

106  26.    thistles  .  .  .  figs.     See  Matt.  vii.  16. 

106  27.     Frisch  zu,  Bruder.     Be  up  and  doing,  Brother ! 

107  10.  Soul  .  .  .  Stomach.  Cp.  172  29.  "  Has  not  the  turtle- 
eating  man  an  eternal  sunshine  of  the  breast  ?  Does  not  his  Soul 
—  which,  as  in  some  Slavonic  dialects,  means  his  Stomach, —  sit 
forever  at  its  ease,  enwrapped  in  warm  condiments,  amid  spicy 
odours."     Essays,  Schiller,  II,  269. 

107  20.     interior  parts.     See  105  25,  n. 

108  4.  the  very  Ditcher.  Illustrating  the  value  of  trifles,  and 
apparently  based  on  Swift's  phrase.  "  And  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion, 
that  whoever  could  make  two  ears  of  corn,  or  two  blades  of  grass, 
to  grow  upon  a  spot  of  ground  where  only  one  grew  before,  would 
deserve  better  of  mankind,  and  do  more  essential  service  to  his 
country,  than  the  whole  race  of  politicians  put  together."  Gulliver''s 
Travels,  II,  ch.  vi.     Voyage  to  Brobdignag. 

108  20.  The  Scottish  Brassmith's  Idea.  Watts'  invention  of 
the  steam-engine.  "  A  poor,  quite  mechanical  Magician  speaks,  and 
fire-winged  ships  cross  the  Ocean  at  his  bidding."  Essays,  Death 
of  Goethe,  III,  148  ;  cp.  id..  Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  139. 

108  23.  Enchanter's  Familiar.  Possible  allusion  to  Goethe's 
poem,  Der  Zauberlehrling,  in  which  the  novice  raises  a  spirit  to 
fetch  and  carry ;  and  cannot  lay  him. 

108  30.     Prince  of  Darkness.     See  10  31,  n. 

109  11.     what  I  Have.     See  Luke  xii.  15. 
109  32.    many  so  spend. 

At  thirty  man  suspects  himself  a  fool ; 
Knows  it  at  forty  and  reforms  his  plan  : 
At  fifty  chides  his  infamous  delay, 
Pushes  his  prudent  purpose  to  resolve  ; 


330  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  IV. 

In  all  the  magnanimity  of  thought 
Resolves  ;  and  re-resolves  ;  then  dies  the  same. 
Young,  Night  Thoughts,  Night  i.  417-22. 

110  27.     I  broke  it.     See  111  is,  n. 

110  i28.    the  words  of  Ancient  Pistol. 

Fal.     I  will  not  lend  thee  a  penny. 
Pist.    Why  then  the  world's  my  oyster. 
Which  I  with  sword  will  open. 

Merry  Wives,  ii.  2. 

111  5.  breaks-off  his  neck-halter.  See  110  27.  ''Am  I  like 
a  sorry  hack  content  to  feed  on  heather  while  rich  clover  seems  to  lie 
around  it  at  a  little  distance,  becmise  in  struggling  to  break  the 
tether  it  has  almost  hanged  itself  ? "  C.-Joiir.,  Hoddam  Hill,  sub 
ann.,  Sept.  21,  1825.  Cp.  French  proverb,  "  Rien  ne  vaut  poulain, 
s'il  ne  rompt  son  lien." 

Ill  18.  having  thrown-up.  Carlyle's  actual  situation  in  1820. 
"  Law  I  fear  must  be  renounced  ;  it  is  a  shapeless  mass  of  absurdity 
and  chicane  .  .  .  Teaching  a  school  is  but  another  word  for  sure 
and  not  very  slow  destruction  ;  and  as  to  compiling  the  wretched 
lives  of  Montesquieu,  Montagu,  Montaigne,  etc.,  for  Dr.  Brewster  — 
the  remuneration  will  hardly  sustain  life.  What  then  is  to  be  done  .''  " 
E.  Lett.,  135.  See  entire  letter.  Cp.  C.  E.  L.,  I,  64,  85.  The  hero 
of  Wotton  Reinfj-ed  is  in  similar  perplexity  ;  see  cap.  i. 

Ill  22.     Son  of  Time.     Goethean  phrase.     Cp.  117  26. 

Drum  danket  Gott,  ihr  Sohne  der  Zeit, 
Dass  er  die  Pole  fiir  ewig  entzweit. 

Gott,  Gemiith  u.  Welt. 

111  25.    No  Object. 

Bin  ich  der  Fliichtling  nicht,  der  Unbehaus'te, 
Der  Unmensch  ohne  Zweck  und  Ruh'. 

Fmist,  sc.  xiii.  1.  3347  f. 

112  1.  Examen  Rigorosum.  "  Having  passed  his  third  and  last 
trial,  the  exame7i  rigorosum,  and  this  with  no  common  applause,  he 
(Hoffmann)  was  soon  after  appointed  Assessor  of  the  Court  at 
Posen,  in  South  Prussia."    German  Romance  ;  Introduction,  Essays, 

I,  432  f..  Append.  ;  cp.  Essays,  Goethe'' s  Works,  III,  190  ;   C.-Trans., 

II,  127. 

112  2.  Auscultator.  About  equivalent  to  '*  lawyer's  assistant." 
"In  1795,  he  passed  his  first  professional  trial  and  was  admitted 
Auscultator  of  the  Court  of  Konigsberg."     Essays,  I,  432. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  IV.]        GETTING    UNDER    WAY.  331 

112  10.     Small  speculation. 

Thou  hast  no  speculation  in  those  eyes, 
Which  thou  dost  glare  with. 

Macbeth,  iii.  4. 

112  22.  cygnet  or  gosling.  The  idea  is  proverbial  and  traceable 
to  the  Anatoffiy  of  Melancholy,  Part  i,  Sect.  2,  Memb.  3,  Subsect. 
14.      "  All  our  geese  are  swans." 

113  1.  Assessorship.  Query,  professorship .?  vSee  114  l,  n.  As- 
sessor corresponds  to  a  lawyer  not  yet  called  to  the  bar. 

113  17.  Horn  of  Plenty.  See  Ovid,  East,  v.  11 5-1 24  for  the 
legend. 

113  18.    the  prompt  nature.     See  110  6. 

113  20.  private  Tuition.  Carlyle  had  private  pupils  in  Edin- 
burgh in  1819  ;  (C  E.  L.,  I,  61),  and  from  1822  to  1824  he  was 
family  tutor  to  the  young  Bullers.     See  ib.,  145-232. 

113  24.  faculty  of  Translation.  Carlyle  translated  among  other 
things,  Lege7idre,  1822  ;  IVilhelm  Aleister,  1823  ;  selections  from 
Tieck,  Musaeus,  Fouque  and  Richter,  1827. 

113  28.  there  is  always.  This  proverb  occurs  in  a  chap-book, 
A  Collection  of  Scotch  Proverbs,  by  Allan  Ramsay  (Paisley,  N.  D.), 
p.  19,  as  "There  is  aye  life  for  a  living  man."  In  some  collections 
it  reads  "m  a  living  man." 

114  1.  throw  light.  Carlyle  was  an  unsuccessful  applicant  for 
professorships  at  St.  Andrews  and  London.  While  Sartor  was 
being  published  in  Eraser,  he  also  asked  Jeffrey  to  help  him  to  the 
chair  of  Astronomy  at  Edinburgh.  This  Jeffrey  refused  to  do  in 
a  letter  which  Carlyle  long  resented.  See  Rem.,  II,  265-268,  and 
Froude's  remarks,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  xvii.  lie  may  refer  to  some  such 
letter  in  former  applications. 

114  12.  Herr  Teufelsdrockh.  Her  Ladyship  requests  the  pleasure 
of  Herr  Teufelsdrockh's  presence  at  Aesthetic  Tea,  on  Thursday. 
"  And  some  picture  of  him  was  required  for  all  heads  that  would 
not  sit  blank  and  mute  in  the  topic  of  every  coffee-house  and 
aesthetic  tea.''''     Essays,  Life  and  Writings  of  Werner,  I,  93. 

114  15.     solid  pudding. 

Poetic  Justice,  with  her  lifted  scale, 

Where  in  nice  balance,  truth  with  gold  she  weighs, 

And  solid  pudding  against  empty  praise. 

Pope,  The  Diuiciad,  i.  52-4. 

115  3.  The  Zahdarms.  "The  story  of  the  book,"  said  Mrs. 
Strachey  to   her  son,  "  is  plain   as   a  pike-staff.     Teufelsdrockh    is 


332  A'OTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  IV. 

Thomas  himself.  The  Zahdarms  are  your  uncle  and  aunt  BuUer. 
Toughgut  is  young  Charles  BuUer."  Carlyle  and  the  "  Rose-god- 
dess." Nineteenth  Century,  1892.  The  Bullers  were  wealthy  people, 
the  first  Carlyle  had  come  in  contact  with. 

115  6.  Gnadigen  Frau.  Literally  "  gracious  Lady,"  the  German 
title  for  a  lady  of  rank. 

115  30.     Sphinx  riddle.     See  47  20,  n. 

115  32.      blackness  of  darkness.     See  Jude,  13. 

116  10.     sadder  and  wiser. 

A  sadder  and  a  wiser  man. 
He  rose  the  morrow  mom. 

A  nciejit  Mariner. 

116  24.  Life  everywhere.  Cp.  47  9,  n.  "There  is  an  age  when 
to  every  man  life  appears  the  simplest  matter.  How  very  manage- 
able !  Every  why  has  its  wherefore  ;  this  leads  to  that,  and  the 
whole  problem  of  existence  is  easy  and  certain  as  a  question  in  the 
Rule  of  Three :  Multiply  the  second  and  third  terms  together,  and 
divide  the  product  by  the  first,  and  the  quotient  will  be  the  answer. 
Trust  me,  friend,  before  you  come  to  my  time  of  day,  you  will  find 
there  is  a  devilish  fraction  always  over,  do  what  you  will  ;  and  if 
you  try  to  reduce  it,  it  goes  into  a  repeating  decimal  and  leads  you 
the  Lord  knows  whither."     L.  W.  C,  IVotton  Reinfred,  88  f. 

117  5.     Saturn. 

Embraced  by  Saturn,  Rhea  gave  to  light 

A  glorious  race 

But  them,  as  issuing  from  the  sacred  womb 
They  touched  the  mother's  knees,  did  Saturn  huge 
Devour. 

Hesiod,  Theog.,  541-551  ;  (Valpy.) 

117  9.  Holy  Alliance.  The  compact  of  Russia,  Austria  and 
Prussia  to  maintain  the  existing  dynasties  made  at  Paris  on  Sept. 
26,  1815. 

117  26.     Son  of  Time.     See  111  22,  n. 

117  33.     to  work.     See  above,  1.  15. 

118  3.    Hudibras's  sword. 

The  trenchant  blade,  Toledo  trusty, 
For  want  of  fighting  was  grown  rusty, 
And  ate  into  itself  for  lack 
Of  somebody  to  hew  and  hack. 

H?idil'ras,  Part  i.  Canto  i,  1.  359. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  IV.]         GETTING    UNDER    WAY.  ^t^Z 

118  7.     ''excellent  Passivity."     See  91  5,  n. 

lis  16.     stillness  of  manner.     Cp.  12  30  and  28  7-i5. 

118  24.  ironic  tone.  "  No  swagger  in  the  latter  (Carlyle  him- 
self) ;  but  a  want  of  it  which  was  almost  still  worse.  Not  sanguine 
and  diffusive,  he  ;  but  biliary  and  intense,  — '  far  too  sarcastic  for  a 
young  man,'  said  several  in  the  years  now  coming."    Rem.,  II,  24. 

118  33.  how  many  individuals.  "In  Edinburgh,  'from  my 
fellow-creatures,'  he  says,  '  little  or  nothing  but  vinegar  was  my 
reception  when  we  happened  to  meet  or  pass  near  each  other  —  my 
own  blame  mainly,  so  proud,  shy,  poor,  at  once  so  insignificant-look- 
ing and  so  grim  and  sorrowful.  That  in  '  Sartor  '  of  the  worm  trod- 
den on  and  proving  a  torpedo  is  not  wholly  a  fable,  but  did  actually 
befall  once  or  twice,  as  I,  still  with  a  kind  of  small  not  ungenial 
malice,  can  remember.' "  C.  E.  L.,  1,  57.  "  By  such  half  displays 
of  his  inward  nature,  poor  Wotton's  popularity  was  seldom  in- 
creased. Bernard  was  confessedly  a  man  of  parts,  by  whom  it 
might  seem  less  disgraceful  to  be  tutored  ;  but  who  was  this  Wotton, 
this  sharp,  scornful  stripling,  whom  no  one  meddled  with  unpun- 
ished ?  "     Z.  W.  G.,  Wotton  Rein/red,  40  f.;  cp.  Rem.,  II,  24,  top. 

120  1.  Hie  Jacet.  The  '  alleged  defect '  is  probably  the  unclas- 
sical  'nunc  a  labore '  version  of  Rev.  xiv.  13. 

120  23.     baking  bricks.     See  Exodus  v.  6-19. 

121  7.  Quitting  the  common  Fleet.  "  Mankind  sail  their  Life- 
voyage  in  huge  fleets,  following  some  single  whale-fishing  or  herring- 
fishing  Commodore  :  the  log-book  of  each  differs  not,  in  essential 
import,  from  that  of  any  other  :  nay,  the  most  have  no  legible  log- 
book (reflection,  observation  not  being  among  their  talents);  keep 
no  reckoning,  on\y  keep  ift  sight  of  the  flagship,  —  and  fish."  Essays, 
BosweWs  Johnson,  III,  94  f.  ;  cp.  Letter  to  J.  Carlyle,  Aug.  6,  1830  ; 
C.  E.  L.,  II,  117. 

121  8.  herring-busses.  "  A  small  sea-vessel,  used  by  us  and  the 
Dutch  in  the  herring-fishery,  commonly  from  50  to  60  tons  burden 
and  sometimes  more.  A  buss  has  two  small  sheds  or  cabins,  one  at 
the  prow  and  the  other  at  the  stern  ;  that  at  the  prow  serves  as  a 
kitchen."  McCulloch,  Dictionary  of  Commerce  and  Gommercial 
Navigation.  This  craft  figures  in  the  discussions  of  the  fishing 
bounties  at  the  beginning  of  this  century. 

121  18.  Northwest  Passage.  In  18 18  and  again  in  1827,  Capt. 
John  Ross  started  from  England  to  find  the  Northwest  Passage. 
His  portrait  is  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  amusing  of  the  Eraser 
series.     The   idea   is    Shandean.     "  I   am   convinced,  Yorick,"  con- 


334  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  IV. 

tinued  my  father,  half  reading  and  half  discoursing,  "  that  there  is  a 
northwest  passage  to  the  intellectual  world ;  and  that  the  soul  of 
man  has  shorter  ways  of  going  to  work,  in  furnishing  itself  with 
knowledge  and  instruction,  than  we  generally  take  with  it."  Tris- 
tram Shandy,  bk.  v.  cap.  xlii,  "  Stealing,  we  say,  is  properly  the 
North- West  Passage  to  Enjoyment  :  while  common  Navigators  sail 
painfully  along  torrid  shores,  laboriously  doubling  this  or  the  other 
Cape  of  Hope,  your  adroit  Thief-Parry,  drawn  on  smooth  dog- 
sledges,  is  already  there  and  back  again."  Essays,  Count  Cagliostro, 
III,  345. —  Spice-country.  Southern  Arabia  is  famous  for  its 
spices.  C-p.  Paradise  Lost,  iv.  159-165.  —  Nowhere.  Utopia.  See 
5  13,  n. 

121  21.     Calypso-Island. 

Ulysses  sole  of  all  the  victor  train, 
An  exile  from  his  dear  paternal  coast, 
Deplored  his  absent  queen  and  empire  lost ; 
Calypso  in  her  caves  constrained  his  stay 
With  sweet,  reluctant,  amorous  delay. 

Pope,  Odyssey,  i.  18-22. 

121  30.     a  Person.     See  118  20. 

121  33.     Like  and  Unlike.     The  same  idea  is  found  in  Goethe 
and  Tennyson,  but  both  are  not  equally  serious.     Compare 

Warum  tanzen  Biibchen  mit  Madchen  so  gem  ? 
Ungleich  dem  Gleichen  bleibet  nicht  fern. 

Gott,  Gemidh  u.  Welt. 

with  the  famous  close  of  The  Princess,  vii. 

His  dearest  bond  is  this 
Not  like  in  like,  but  like  in  difference,  etc. 

122  13-15.    Paradise  .  .  .  Eve  .  .  .  Tree  of  Knowledge.     See 
Gen.  ii.  8,  25. 

122  18.     Cherubim,     See  Gen.  iii.  24. 

122  22.     sacred  air-towers.     Cp.  Tennyson,  Timbuctoo. 

Soon  yon  brilliant  towers 
Shall  darken  with  the  waving  of  her  wand  ; 
Darken  and  shrink  and  shrivel  into  huts, 
Black  set  amid  a  waste  of  dreary  sand, 
Low-built,  mud-wall'd,  barbarian  settlement. 
How  chang'd  from  that  fair  city  ! 

122  25.     Forlorn.     In    German   the  adjective  may  be  used  as  a 
noun  much  more  freely  than   in   English.     Carlyle  introduces  such 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  v.]  ROMANCE.  335 

phrases  often,  in   order  to  give  a  German  air  to  his  book.     Cp. 
5  2,  n,  123  5,  125  24,  128  8,  end,  etc. 

122  28.  reverberating  furnace.  One  in  which  the  flame  is 
driven  over  the  substance  to  be  smelted.  The  fire  is  covered  in  and 
intensely  hot.     The  walls  are  not  especially  '  thin.'     Cp.  123  29. 

122  34.     Esthetic  Tea.     See  114  12,  n. 

123  3.     Jacob's  ladder.     See  Gen.  xxviii.  12. 

123  25.  his  own  figurative  style.     Self-conscious.     Cp.  5  30,  n. 

123  29.  reverberating  furnace.     See  122  28,  n.    • 

123  34.  the  outskirts  of  -Sisthetic  Tea.     See  114  12,  n. 

124  11.  thin  walls.     See  122  28,  n. 
124  15.  an  extinct  volcano.     See  28  11. 
124  22.  not  wisely.     See  Othello,  v.  2,  343. 

124  23.  Congreve.  A  large  rocket  used  as  a  weapon,  named 
from  the  inventor.     Cp.  124  3. 

124  26.  First  Love.  This  quotation  I  have  been  unable  to 
identify. 

124  31.  St.  Martin's  Summer.  The  warm  season  in  the  autumn, 
known  in  America  as  Indian  Summer.  St.  Martin's  day  is  Nov. 
II.     The  rose,  the  myrtle  and  the  apple  were  sacred  to  Venus. 

125  9.  Petrarchan  and  Werterean.  Alluding  to  Petrarch's  son- 
net series  in  praise  of  Laura,  and  Goethe's  novel  of  unhappy  love, 
Die  Leiden  des  Jioigen  IVertJier  (1774). 

125  12.     Blumine.     See  Introd. 

125  17.  Preestablished  Harmony.  "  The  designation  of  Leibnitz 
for  his  theory  of  the  Divinely-established  relation  between  body  and 
mind  —  the  movements  of  monads  and  the  succession  of  ideas,  as  it 
were  a  constant  agreement  between  two  clocks  (Syst.  Nouv.,  p.  14; 
Erdmann,  pp.  12710133  seq.;  Theodicee ;  La  Alonadologie')^  Flem- 
ing, Vocabulary  of  Philosophy. 

125  34.     Esthetic  Tea.    See  114  12,  n. 

126  2.     Gnadige  Frau.     See  115  6,  n. 

126  7.  Waldschloss.  Castle  in  the  Wood.  Cp.  Z.  W.  C, 
Wotton  Reinfred,  House  in  the  Wold,  cap.  iv.  and  passiin. 

126  8.  absolved.  The  German  verb  '  absolviren  '  means  '  to 
finish  one's  studies.' 

126  11.  Noble  Mansion  !  "  A  circular  valley  of  some  furlongs 
in  diameter  lay  round  them,  like  a  huge  amphitheatre,  broken  only 
in  its  contour  by  the  entrance  of  two  oblique  chasms  like  the  one 
they  had  left ;  on  its  level  bottom  of  the  purest  green  stood  a  large 
stately  mansion,  which  seemed  to  be  of  granite,  for  in  the  sunshine 
it  glittered  from  amid  its  high  clusters  of  foliage  like  a  palace  of 


336  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  V. 

El  Dorado,  overlaid  with  precious  metal.  Behind  it,  and  on  both 
sides  at  a  distance,  the  hills  sloped  up  in  a  gentle  wavy  curvature  ; 
the  sward  was  of  the  greenest,  embossed  here  and  there  with  low 
dark-brown  frets  of  crag,  or  spotted  by  some  spreading  solitary  tree 
and  its  shadow."     L.  IV.  C,  IVottoii  Kcinfred,  y6  i. 

126  15.  El  Dorado.  '  The  Gilded  One.'  The  name  for  a  mythi- 
cal kingdom  in  South  America,  of  great  wealth.  The  legend 
was  justified  by  the  riches  of  Mexico  and  Peru. 

126  20.  Amnion's  Temple.  The  seat  of  a  famous  oracle,  with 
a  wonderful  spring  (Ovid,  A/t^t.,  15,  v.  309  ;  Lucret.,  6,  v.  847).  See 
Herod,  ii.  42,  54  ;  Diod.  iii.  72  ;  Landor,  Itnag.  Conversations,  Alex- 
ajider  and  the  Priest  of  Haitinion.  I  can  find  no  mention  of  the 
oracles  being  delivered  in  writing. 

126  26.  the  last  Relatio  ex  Actis.  Official  report.  '"This 
must  do,'  writes  he  in  his  Diary,  '  and  it  will  do  ;  for  now  I  shall 
never  more  have  a  Relatio  ex  Actis  to  write  while  I  live,  and  so 
the  Fountain  of  all  Evil  is  dried  up.' "  E.  J.  W.  Hoffman,  quoted 
by  Carlyle  ;  Essays,  I,  436. 

127  9.  How  came  it.  "  His  spirit  was  roused  from  its  deepest 
recesses,  a  thousand  dim  images  and  vague  feelings  of  gladness  and 
pain  were  clashing  in  tumultuous  vortices  within  him  ;  he  felt  as  if 
he  stood  on  the  eve  of  some  momentous  incident  —  as  if  this  hour 
were  to  decide  the  welfare  or  woe  of  long  future  years."  L.  W.  C, 
Wotton  Rein/red,  45. 

127  23.  Blumine's  was  a  name.  "  Jane  Montagu  was  a  name 
well  known  to  him ;  far  and  wide  its  fair  owner  was  celebrated  for 
her  graces  and  gifts ;  herself  also  he  had  seen  and  noted  ;  her  slim, 
daintiest  form,  her  soft  sylph-like  movement,  her  black  tresses  shad- 
ing a  face  so  gentle  yet  so  ardent  ;  but  all  this  he  had  noted  only  as 
a  beautiful  vision  which  he  himself  had  scarcely  right  to  look  at,  for 
her  sphere  was  far  from  his  ;  as  yet  he  had  never  heard  her  voice  or 
hoped  that  he  should  ever  speak  with  her."  L.  IV.  C,  IVotton  Rein- 
fred,  44  f . 

128  28.  Genius.  This  is  not  the  Socratic  daijuidjp,  for  that  never 
prompted  to  action  (see  Cic,  De  Div.,  i.  c.  54);  but  rather  the  Neo- 
Platonic  genius,  which  is  born  with  every  man,  determines  his 
character  and  tries  to  influence  him  for  good.  See  Ant.  and  Cleop., 
ii.  3,  20;  Macb.,  iii.  i,  56,  etc.;  Goethe,  Wanderers  Sturmlied ; 
Plut.  and  Apul.,  de  Genio  Socratis. 

128  30.     Show  thyself.     Apparently  an  echo  of 

Awake,  arise  or  be  for  ever  fallen." 

Par.  Lost,  i.  330. 


Bk.  II.  Cap.  v.]  ROMANCE.  337 

129  15.  Philistine.  "  A  vain  sophistical  young  man  was  afflict- 
ing the  party  with  much  slender  and,  indeed,  base  speculation  on 
the  human  mind  ;  this  he  resumed  after  the  pause  and  bustle  of 
the  new  arrival.  Wotton,  by  one  or  two  Socratic  questions  in 
his  happiest  style,  contrived  to  silence  him  for  the  night.  The  dis- 
comfiture of  this  logical  marauder  was  felt  and  even  hailed  as  a 
benefit  by  every  one  ;  but  sweeter  than  all  applauses  was  the  glad 
smile,  threatening  every  moment  to  become  a  laugh,  and  the  kind, 
thankful  look  with  which  Jane  Montagu  repaid  the  victor.  He 
ventured  to  speak  to  her  :  she  answered  him  with  attention,  nay,  it 
seemed  as  if  there  were  a  tremor  in  her  voice;  and  perhaps  she 
thanked  the  dusk  that  it  half  hid  her."    L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Rein/red,  46. 

129  30.  The  conversation.  "  The  conversation  took  a  higher 
tone,  one  fine  thought  called  forth  another  ;  each,  the  speakers  and 
the  hearers  alike,  felt  happy  and  well  at  ease."  L.  IV.  C,  Wotton 
Reinfred,  46  f.  "  In  such  hours,  when  all  is  invitation  to  peace  and 
gladness,  the  soul  expands  with  full  freedom,  man  feels  himself 
brought  nearer  to  man,  and  the  narrowest  hypochondriac  is  charmed 
from  his  selfish  seclusion  and  surprised  by  the  pleasure  of  unwonted 
s)rmpathy  with  nature  and  his  brethren.  Gaily  in  light  graceful 
abandonment  and  touches  of  careless  felicity,  the  friendly  talk  played 
round  the  table  ;  each  said  what  he  liked  without  fear  that  others 
might  dislike  it,  for  the  burden  was  rolled  from  every  heart ;  the 
barriers  of  ceremony,  which  are  indeed  the  laws  of  polite  living, 
melted  into  vapour,  and  the  poor  claims  of  me  and  thee,  no  longer 
parted  and  enclosed  by  rigid  lines,  flowed  softly  into  each  other  ; 
and  life  lay  like  some  fair  unappropriated  champaign,  variegated 
indeed  by  many  tints,  but  all  these  mingling  by  gentle  undulations, 
by  imperceptible  shadings,  and  all  combining  into  one  harmonious 
whole.  Such  virtue  has  a  kind  environment  of  circumstances  over 
cultivated  hearts.  And  yet  as  the  light  grew  yellower  and  purer 
on  the  mountain  tops,  and  the  shadows  of  these  stately  scattered 
trees  fell  longer  over  the  valley,  some  faint  tone  of  sadness  may 
have  breathed  through  the  heart,  and  in  whispers  more  or  less 
audible  reminded  every  one  by  natural  similitude,  that  as  this  bright 
day  was  coming  towards  its  close,  so  also  must  the  day  of  man's 
existence  decline  into  dusk  and  darkness,  and  the  night  come, 
wherein  all  image  of  its  joy  and  woe  would  pass  away  and  be  for- 
gotten."    lb.,  p.  124  f. 

130  18.  To  our  Friend.  "To  Wotton  the  hours  seemed 
moments  ;  he  had  never  been  as  now ;   the  words  from  those  sweet- 


^:^S  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  V. 

est  lips  came  over  him  like  dew  on  thirsty  grass  ;  his  whole  soul  was 
as  if  lapped  in  richest  melodies,  and  all  better  feelings  within  him 
seemed  to  whisper,  '  It  is  good  for  us  to  be  here.'  At  parting,  the 
fair  one's  hand  was  in  his  :  in  the  balmy  twilight,  with  the  kind 
stars  above  them,  he  spoke  something  of  meeting  again,  which  was 
not  contradicted ;  he  pressed  gently  those  small  soft  fingers,  and  it 
seemed  as  if  they  were  not  hastily  or  angrily  withdrawn."  L.  W.  C, 
Wottoji  Keinfrcd,  47. 

130  20.  dew  on  thirsty  grass.  Probably  a  recollection  of 
Hosea  vi.  1-4  in  the  form  of  the  Scotch  "paraphrase,"  with  which 
Carlyle  as  a  born  Presbyterian  would  be  familiar. 

As  dew  upon  the  tender  herb, 

Diffusing  fragrance  round  ; 
As  show'rs  that  usher  in  the  spring, 

And  cheer  the  thirsty  ground. 

Paraphrase,  xxx. 

130  21.     It  is  good.     See  Matt.  xvii.  4. 

131  6.  Archimedes-lever.  The  authority  for  this  saying  is  Sim- 
plicius  in  Phys.,  424  a,  edition  of  Brandis.  It  is  usually  but  incor- 
rectly quoted  Aos  ttou  <xtQ)  koL  ttjv  yrjv  Kivqcroi.  For  other  readings 
see  Biichmann,  Geflilg.  Wortc,  360,  17  ed. 

131  14.  Pyrrhus  conquering.  Cp.  81  14,  n.  "To  be  sure," 
said  Cineas  ..."  but  when  we  have  conquered  all,  what  are  we  to 
do  then  ?  "  "  Why  then,  my  friend,"  said  Pyrrhus  laughing,  "  we 
will  take  our  ease,  and  drink  and  be  merry."  Langhorne's  Phitarch  ; 
cp.  De  Quincey,  Historical  Essays,  Secret  Societies,  II,  291,  f. 

131  24.  Disbelieving  all  things.  "  Doubting  and  disbelieving 
all  things,  the  poor  youth  had  never  learned  to  believe  in  himself. 
....  Thus  in  timid  pride  he  withdrew  within  his  own  fastnesses, 
where,  baited  by  a  thousand  dark  spectres,  he  saw  himself  as  if  con- 
strained to  renounce  in  unspeakable  sadness  the  fairest  hopes  of 
existence.  And  now  how  sweet,  how  ravishing  the  contradiction  ! 
'  She  has  looked  on  thee  !  '  cried  he  ;  'she,  the  fairest,  noblest  ;  she 
does  not  despise  thee  ;  her  dark  eyes  smiled  on  thee  :  her  hand  was 
in  thine ;  some  figure  of  thee  was  in  her  soul !  '  Storms  of  trans- 
port rushed  through  his  heart  as  he  recalled  the  scene,  and  sweetest 
intimations  that  he  also  was  a  man,  that  for  him  also  unutterable 
joys  had  been  provided."     Z.  /F.  C,  Wotton  Rein/red,  48. 

13131.  Heaven's  Messenger.  —  Aurora.  —  Morning-Star.  See 
Introd. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  v.]  ROMANCE.  33^ 

132  12.  "Was  she  not  to  him.  "  To  him  her  presence  brought 
with  it  airs  from  heaven.  A  balmy  rest  encircled  his  spirit  while 
near  her  ;  pale  doubt  fled  away  to  the  distance,  and  life  bloomed 
up  with  happiness  and  hope.  The  young  man  seemed  to  awake  as 
from  a  haggard  dream  ;  he  had  been  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  then, 
and  his  eyes  could  not  discern  it !  But  now  the  black  walls  of  his 
prison  melted  away,  and  the  captive  was  alive  and  free  in  the  sunny 
spring  !  If  he  loved  the  benignant  disenchantress  .■*  His  whole 
heart  and  soul  and  life  were  hers  ;  yet  he  had  never  thought  of 
love  ;  for  his  whole  existence  was  but  a  feeling  which  he  had  not 
yet  shaped  into  a  thought."     L.  IV.  C,  IVotton  Reinfred,  49  f. 

132  13.    airs  from  Heaven. 

Bring  with  thee  airs  from  heaven,  or  blasts  from  hell. 

Havilet,  i.  4. 

132  15.  Memnon's  Statue.  "Non  absimilis  illi  narratur  in  Thsbis 
delubro  Serapis,  ut  putant  Memnonis  statuae  dicatus  quem  coti- 
diano  solis  ortu  contactum  radiis  crepare  tradunt."  Pliny,  A^at. 
Hist,  XXX vi.  7. 

"  Ceterum  Germanicus  aliis  quoque  miraculis  intendit  animum, 
quorum  praecipua  fuere  Memnonis  saxea  effigies  ubi  radiis  solis 
icta  est  vocalem  sonum  reddens," —  Tac,  Attn.,  ii.  61. 

132  29.     'Children  of  Time.'     See  111  22,  n. 

132  34.  Duenna  Cousin.  See  Introd.  for  discussion.  *'  Jane 
Montagu  had  an  ancient  maiden  aunt  who  was  her  hostess  and 
protectress,  to  whom  she  owed  all  and  looked  for  all.  .  .  .  What 
passed  between  the  good  maiden  and  her  aunt  we  know  not  ;  she 
had  high  hopes  from  her  niece,  and  in  her  meagre,  hunger-bitten 
philosophy,  Wotton's  visits  had  from  the  first  been  but  faintly 
approved  of."     L.  IV.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  50  ;  cp.  Rem.,  II,  57-59. 

133  4.  What  figure.  "  Yes,  Jeannie,  though  I  have  brought 
you  into  rough,  rugged  conditions,  I  feel  that  I  have  saved  you  :  as 
Gigmaness  you  could  not  have  lived."  Letter  to  his  Wife,  Aug. 
1831.     C.  E.  L.,  II,  189. 

133  8.     absolved  Auscultator.     See  126  8,  n.  and  112  2,  n. 
133  9.     religion  of  young  hearts.     See  above,  1.  i. 

Will  the  love  that  you're  so  rich  in 

Make  a  fire  in  the  kitchen  ? 

Or  the  little  god  of  Love  turn  the  spit,  spit,  spit  ? 

Old  Song. 


340 


NO  TES.  [Bk.  1 1,  Cap. VI. 


133  22.  Montgolfier.  The  first  form  of  the  balloon  invented  by 
the  brother's  Montgolfier  (1784).  It  was  mflated  by  means  of  hot 
air,  and  the  fire  used  was  often  the  cause  of  accidents. 

134  4.  One  morning.  "  One  morning  he  found  his  fair  Jane 
constrained  and  sad  ;  she  was  silent,  absent ;  she  seemed  to  have 
been  weeping.  The  aunt  left  the  room.  He  pressed  for  explana- 
tion, first  in  kind  solicitude,  then  with  increasing  apprehension  ;  but 
none  was  to  be  had,  save  only  broken  hints  that  she  was  grieved  for 
herself,  for  him,  that  she  had  much  to  suffer,  that  he  must  cease  to 
visit  her.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  thunderstruck  Wotton  demanded, 
'  Why  ?  Why  t '  '  One  whom  she  entirely  depended  on  had  so 
ordered  it,  and  for  herself,  she  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  obey.' 
She  resisted  all  entreaties  ;  she  denied  all  explanation  ;  her  words 
were  firm  and  cold  ;  only  by  a  thrill  of  anguish  that  once  or  twice 
quivered  over  her  face  could  a  calmer  man  have  divined  that  she 
was  suffering  within.  Wotton's  pride  was  stung  ;  he  rose  and  held 
out  his  hand  :  '  Farewell,  then,  madam  ! '  said  he,  in  a  low  steady 
voice  ;  *  I  will  not  — '  She  put  her  hand  in  his ;  she  looked  in  his 
face,  tears  started  to  her  eyes."     L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Rcinfred,  50  f. 

"Yet  still  her  right  hand  was  in  his  and  they  again  stood  near  in 
space,  though  in  relation  so  widely  divided  !  A  tear  was  gathering 
in  the  bright  eyes  of  Jane,  which  she  fixed  on  the  ground,  and  through 
Wotton's  heart  were  quivering  wild  tones  of  remembrance  and 
hope,  wailing  as  of  infinite  grief,  and  touches  of  rapture  rising  almost 
to  pain.  He  gazed  silently  on  that  loved  form  ;  there  was  no 
motion  in  her  hand,  but  she  timidly  raised  her  face,  where  over  soft, 
quick  blushes  tears  were  stealing,  and  next  moment,  neither  knew 
how  it  was,  but  his  arms  were  round  her,  and  her  bosom  was  on 
his,  and  in  the  first  pure  heavenly  kiss  of  love  two  souls  were  melted 
into  one."     lb.,  p.  181. 

"The  pale  angelic  face,  the  lips  of  which  he  timidly  pressed,  but 
did  not  kiss,  till  all-powerful  Love  bound  its  girdles  round  them,  and 
drew  the  two  closer  and  closer  together,  and  their  two  souls,  like 
two  tears,  melted  into  one."     Quintiis  Fixlein,  C.-Trans.,  II,  149. 

134  20.      immortal  by  a  kiss. 

Was  this  the  face  that  launch'd  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burnt  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium  ?  — 
Sweet  Helen,  make  me  immortal  with  a  kiss. 

Marlowe,  Doctor  Faustus,  sc.  xiii. 

135  7.     a  shivered  Universe.     See  134  23. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  VI.]    SORROWS  OF  TEUFELSDROCKH.  341 

135  9.  Satanic.  The  name  given  by  Southey  to  the  school  of 
Byron.     See  his  Vision  of  Judgmeiit,  Preface,  1822. 

135  16.  Pilgerstab.  This  is  a  regular  literary  "  property  "  and 
figures  constantly  in  German  poems  and  tales. 

135  30.  genii  enfranchised.  See  Arabian  Nights,  The  Story  of 
the  Fisherman  ;  Lane,  I,  78  ff.     Lond.,  1841. 

135  34.     as  we  remarked.     See  124  31. 

136  4.  One  highest  hope.  "  '  And  she  —  O  fair  and  golden  as 
the  dawn  she  rose  upon  my  soul.  Night  with  its  ghastly  fantasms 
fled  away ;  and  beautiful  and  solemn  in  earnest  shade  and  gay  sun- 
shine lay  our  life  before  me.  And  then,  and  then  !  O  God,  a  gleam 
of  hell  passed  over  the  face  of  my  angel,  and  the  pageant  was  rolled 
together  like  a  scroll,  and  thickest  darkness  fell  over  me,  and  I 
heard  the  laughter  of  a  demon  !  But  what  of  it  .-* '  cried  he,  sud- 
denly checking  himself.  *  It  was  a  vision,  a  brief  calenture,  a  thing 
that  belonged  not  to  this  earth.'  "     L.  IV.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  8  f. 

136  9.  Calenture.  "A  feverish  disorder  incident  to  sailors  in 
hot  climates  ;  the  principal  symptom  of  which  is,  their  imagining  the 
sea  to  be  green  fields  ;  hence,  attempting  to  walk  abroad  in  these 
imaginary  places  of  delight  they  are  frequently  lost."  Howard'' s 
New  Royal  Cyclopaedia. 

—  And  away  we  sail'd  and  we  past 
Over  that  undersea  isle,  where  the  water  is  clearer  than  air  : 
Down  we  look'd  ;  what  a  garden  !     O  bliss,  what  a  Paradise  there  ! 
Towers  of  a  happier  time,  low  down  in  a  rainbow  deep 
Silent  palaces,  quiet  fields  of  eternal  sleep  ! 

And  three  of  the  gentlest  and  best  of  my  people,  whate'er  I  could  say, 
Plunged  headlong  down  in  the  sea,  and  the  Paradise  trembled  away. 

Tennyson,  Voyage  of  Maeldune. 

137  3.  like  unto  a  wheel.  Ps.  Ixxxiii.  13,  adapted;  cp.  Tris- 
tram Shafidy,  vol.  vii.  cap.  xiii.  for  this  thought  expanded. 

138  3.  Mountains  were  not  new.  "  Mountains  were  not  new 
to  either  of  them  ;  but  rarely  are  mountains  seen  in  such  combined 
majesty  and  grace  as  here.  The  rocks  are  of  that  sort  called  primi- 
tive by  the  mineralogist,  which  always  arrange  themselves  in 
masses  of  a  rugged  and  gigantic  character  ;  but  their  ruggedness  is 
softened  by  a  singular  elegance  of  form  ;  in  a  climate  favourable  to 
vegetation,  the  gray  shapeless  cliff  itself  covered  with  lichens  rises 
through  a  garment  of  foliage  or  verdure,  and  white  bright  tufted 
cottages  are  clustered  round  the  base  of  the  everlasting  granite.  In 
fine  vicissitude,  beauty  alternates  with  grandeur.  You  ride  through 
stony  hollows,  along  straight  passes  traversed  by  torrents,  and  over- 


342  NOTES.  [P.k.  II,  Cap.  VI. 

hung  by  high  walls  of  rock  ;  now  winding  amid  broken  shaggy 
chasms,  and  huge  fragments ;  now  suddenly  emerging  into  some 
emerald  valley,  where  the  streamlet  collects  into  a  lake,  and  man 
has  found  a  fair  dwelling,  and  it  seems  as  if  peace  had  established 
herself  in  the  stony  bosom  of  strength."  L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Rein/red, 
67  f.  For  similar  situation  of  hero  among  mountains,  cp.  Novalis, 
Heinrich  von  Oftcrdingcn,  Th.  ii.,  and  Goethe^  Wilhdvi  Mcisters 
Watiderjahre,  ii. 

138  30.  Whoso  can  look.  "  '  After  all,'  said  he, '  what  have  I  to 
lose  ?  My  integrity  is  mine  and  nothing  more.  Who  fears  not 
death,  him  no  shadow  can  make  tremble  ' ;  and  reciting  this  latter 
sentence  with  a  strong  low  tone  in  the  original  words  of  Euripides, 
its  author,  he  rode  along  as  if  composing  his  soul  by  this  antique 
spell  into  forced  and  painful  rest."  L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Rein/red,  166 ; 
cp.  Essays,  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter,  II,  187.  "  Sir,  you're  not 
a  Highlander  or  you  would  know  the  Gaelic  proverb,  '  The  heart  of 
one  who  can  look  death  in  the  face  will  not  start  at  a  shadow.'  " 
Forbes-Mitchell,  Reminiscences  of  the  Great  Mutiny,  p.  89.  Lond., 
1894. 

138  32.  From  such  meditations.  "  In  a  short  time  his  attention 
was  called  outwards  from  these  meditations,  for  the  valley  he  had 
been  ascending  closed  in  abruptly  on  a  broad,  rugged  mountain, 
stretching  like  a  wall  across  the  whole  breadth  of  the  hollow,  the 
high  sides  of  which  it  irregularly  intersected,  forming  on  both  hands 
a  rude  course  for  the  winter  torrents,  and  on  the  right  a  path  which 
suddenly  became  so  steep  and  stony  that  Wotton  judged  it  prudent 
to  dismount  while  climbing  it.  Arrived  with  some  labour  at  the 
top,  he  again  found  himself  in  the  western  sunlight,  which  had  been 
hid  below,  and  he  paused  with  the  bridle  in  his  hand  to  wonder  over 
a  scene  which,  whether  by  its  natural  character  or  from  the  present 
temper  of  his  own  mind,  surpassed  in  impressiveness  all  that  he  had 
ever  looked  on. 

"  It  was  an  upland  wavy  expanse  of  heath  or  rough  broken  downs, 
where  valleys  in  complex  branching  were,  openly  or  imperceptibly 
arranging  their  declivity  towards  every  quarter  of  the  sky.  The 
hill  tops  were  beneath  his  feet  ;  the  cottages,  the  groves,  and 
meadows  lapped  up  the  folds  of  these  lower  ranges  and  hid  from 
sight  ;  but  the  loftiest  summits  of  the  region  towered  up  here  and 
there  as  from  their  base;  gray  cliffs  also  were  scattered  over  the 
waste,  and  tarns  lay  clear  and  earnest  in  thtir  solitude."  L.  W.  C, 
Wotton  Rein/red,  166-167. 


Bk.  Il.Cap.VI.]     SOA'A'OIFS  OF  TEUFELSDRdCKH.  343 

139  14.  But  sunwards.  "  Close  on  the  left  was  a  deep  chasm, 
the  beginnmg  of  another  valley,  on  the  farther  side  of  which  abruptly 
rose  a  world  of  fells,  as  it  were  the  crown  and  centre  of  the  whole 
mountain  country  :  a  hundred  and  a  hundred  savage  peaks  attract- 
ing eye  and  heart  by  their  form,  for  all  was  glowing  like  molten 
gold  in  the  last  light  of  the  sun  now  setting  behind  them,  and  in 
this  majestic  silence  to  the  wanderer,  pensive  and  lonely  in  this 
wilderness,  the  scene  was  not  only  beautiful  but  solemn.  Wotton 
was  affected  to  his  inmost  soul ;  he  gazed  over  these  stupendous 
masses  in  their  strange  light,  and  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  till  now  he 
had  never  known  Nature  ;  never  felt  that  she  had  a  fairy  and 
unspeakable  loveliness  ;  nay,  that  she  was  his  mother  and  divine. 
And  as  the  ruddy  glow  faded  into  clearness  in  the  sky  and  the  sheen 
of  the  peaks  grew  purple  and  sparkling,  and  the  day  was  now  to 
depart,  a  murmur  of  eternity  and  immensity,  a  voice  from  other 
worlds,  stole  through  his  soul,  and  he  almost  felt  as  if  the  earth 
were  not  dead,  as  if  the  spirit  of  the  earth  might  have  its  throne  in 
this  glory  and  his  own  spirit  might  commune  with  it  as  with  a 
kindred  thing."     L.  IF.  C,  IVotton  Rein/red,  167-169. 

139  32.  The  spell  was  broken.  A  passage  similar  to  this  fol- 
lows the  one  quoted  in  the  previous  note.  The  rejected  lover  meets 
the  lady  who  has  rejected  him. 

140  4.  Du  Himmel !  "  Good  heavens  !  "  The  use  of  German 
expletives  was  thoroughly  natural  to  Carlyle.  His  letters  and 
journals  bristle  with  them. 

140  8.  I  remained  alone.  Cp.  19  24.  "  We  were  all  of  us  too 
deeply  moved.  We  at  last  tore  ourselves  asunder  from  repeated 
embraces ;  my  friend  retired  with  the  soul  whom  he  loves.  I 
remained  alone  behind  with  the  Night."  End  of  Quinttts  Fixlein  ; 
quoted  by  Carlyle  in  his  Essay  on  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter. 
Essays,  I,  27. 

140  13.  Some  time  before  Small-pox.  "  Consider,  for  one 
example,  this  peculiarity  of  Modern  Literature,  the  sin  that  has  been 
named  View-hunting.  In  our  elder  writers,  there  are  no  paintings 
of  scenery  for  its  own  sake;  no  euphuistic  gallantries  with  Nature, 
but  a  constant  heartlove  for  her,  a  constant  dwelling  in  communion 
with  her.  View-hunting,  with  so  much  else  that  is  of  kin  to  it,  first 
came  decisively  into  action  through  the  Sorrows  of  IVerler ;  which 
wonderful  Performance,  indeed,  may  in  many  senses  be  regarded  as 
the  progenitor  of  all  that  has  since  become  popular  in  Literature  ; 
whereof,  in  so  far  as  concerns  spirit  and  tendency,  it  still  offers  the 


344  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  VI. 

most  instructive  image  ;  for  nowhere,  except  in  its  own  country, 
above  all  in  the  mind  of  its  illustrious  Author,  has  it  yet  fallen  wholly 
obsolete.  Scarcely  ever  till  that  late  epoch,  did  any  worshipper  of 
Nature  become  entirely  aware  that  he  was  worshipping,  much  to  his 
own  credit ;  and  think  of  saying  to  himself  :  Come  let  us  make  a 
description  !  Intolerable  enough  :  when  every  puny  whipster  draws 
out  his  pencil,  and  insists  on  painting  you  a  scene  ;  so  that  the 
instant  you  discern  such  a  thing,  as  '  wavy  outline,'  *  mirror  of  the 
lake,'  '  stern  headland,'  or  the  like,  in  any  Book,  you  must  timorously 
hasten  on ;  and  scarcely  the  Author  of  Waverley  himself  can  tempt 
you  not  to  skip."     Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  28. 

140  21.     Sorrows  of  Werter.     See  125  9,  n. 

140  24.  Jenner.  An  English  physician  (i 749-1823).  The  dis- 
coverer of  vaccination  as  a  preventive  of  small-pox. 

140  29.  That  Basilisk-glance.  "  The  basilisk  of  elder  times 
was  a  proper  kind  of  serpent,  not  above  three  palms  long,  as  some 
account,  and  differenced  from  other  serpents  by  advancing  his  head, 
and  some  white  marks  or  coronary  spots  upon  the  crown,  as  all 
authentic  writers  have  delivered 

"  Nor  is  only  the  existency  of  this  animal  considerable,  but  many 
things  delivered  thereof,  particularly  its  poison  and  its  generation. 
Concerning  the  first,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  the  ancients,  men 
still  affirm,  that  it  killeth  at  a  distance,  that  it  poisoneth  by  the  eye, 
and  by  priority  of  vision."  Browne,  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,  bk. 
iii.  cap.  vii. 

141  14.  Hadjee.  A  Mohammedan  who  has  performed  the  Hajj 
or  pilgrimage  to  Mecca. 

141  18.  wishing-carpet.  See  The  Arabian  Nights,  the  story  of 
Ahmed  and  Peribanou.  —  Fortunatus'  Hat.     Cp.  236  27. 

But  now  uncover  the  virtues  of  this  hat. 


This  clapped  on  my  head, 
I  only  with  a  wish,  am  through  the  air 
Transported  in  a  moment  over  seas 
And  over  lands  to  any  secret  place. 

Dekker,  Old Fortunatus,  ii.  3. 
Cp.  C.  E.L.,  II,  120. 
141  20.     Street  Advertisements.     Cp.  70  2,  n. 
141  29.     Lover's  Leap.     A  cape  in  the  island  of  Leucadia  off  the 
coast  of  Epirus  is  called  the  Lover's   Leap  from  the  tradition  that 
Sappho  threw  herself  from  the  top  into  the  sea. 


Bk.  II,  Cap. VI.]     SORROWS  OF  TEUFELSDROCKH.  34^ 

—  The  broad  river 
Foaming  and  hurrying  o'er  its  rugged  path, 
Fell  into  that  itpmeasurable  void 
Scattering  its  v^raters  to  the  passing  winds. 

Shelley,  Alastor,  567-570. 

142  10.  Sultan  Mahmoud.  Mahmoud  II.,  Sultan  of  Turkey 
1808-1839.  His  war  with  Russia  in  1827-8  would  account  for 
Carlyle's  mention  of  him.  See  E.  S.  Creasy,  History  0/ the  Ottoman 
Turks,  II,  374-464. 

142  27.     no  rest.     See  Gen.  viii.  9  ;  cp.  Par.  Lost,  i.  227  ff. 

—  till  on  dry  land 
He  lights  ;  if  it  -were,  land  that  ever  burn'd 
With  solid,  as  the  lake  with  liquid  fire. 


such  resting  found  the  sole 
Of  unblest  feet. 

143  9.     Son  of  Time.     See  HI  22,  n. 

143  10.     Satanic  School.     See  135  9,  n. 

143  12.  Epictetus.  A  famous  Stoic  philosopher,  at  one  time  a 
slave  of  one  of  Nero's  freedmen.  His  '  Hand-book,'  '£7x61/315101/, 
a  volume  of  lofty  maxims,  was  collected  by  his  pupil  Arrian.  Carlyle 
was  familiar  with  it.     See  E.  Lett.,  79,  89,  99. 

143  16.  The  end  of  Man.  "...  t^Xos  6,  etc.  The  end  of  maji 
is  an  action,  not  a  thought,  says  Aristotle ;  the  wisest  thing  he  ever 
said."    L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  13  ;    see  Ethics,  bk,  x.  c,  9.  sec.  i. 

143  20.  rugged  all-nourishing  Earth.  "'Upearipa  wdfi^oTi  Td  !  " 
internally  exclaimed  he  in  Doric  words;  "'^pear^pa  irafi^oTi  Vd, 
thou  rugged  all-supporting  earth  !  "  L.  W.  C,  IVotton  Reinfred,  169. 
The  passage  is  from  wSophocles,  Philoctetes,  391  ;  cp.  C.  L.  L.,  II, 
311.     The  Teubner  text  reads  opearipa  Tra/x^QTL  Td. 

143  21.    feeds  the  sparrow.     See  Ps.  cii.  7. 

143  27.  Estrapades.  Falstaff's  "strappado,"  the  torture  of 
hoisting  the  victim  into  the  air,  and  letting  him  fall  so  as  to  dislocate 
the  arms.  The  Place  de  I'Estrapade  in  Paris,  where  many  Protes- 
tants thus  suffered.  — Malzleins.  A  suburb  of  Vienna  is  so  called. 
C- Trans.,  II,  50. 

144  7.  Infernal  Chase.  The  legend  of  a  hunter  flying  through 
the  air  with  his  hounds  in  full  cry  is  spread  over  all  the  north  of 
Europe.  See  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mythologie ;  Thorpe,  Northern 
Mythology,  III,  61  f.,  218  f.;  also  Scott's  translation  of  Biirger's  Der 
wilde  fdger,  note  ;  Reade's  Ptit  Yoicrself  in  Llis  Place,  chaps,  xi. 
xii.;  Wordsworth,  "Though  Narrow  be  that  Old  Man's  Cares." 


346  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  VII. 

144  y.     Cain.     See  Gen.  iv.  13,  14. 
144  10.     Wandering  Jew.     See  14  7,  n. 
144  15.     Sorrows  of  Werter.     See  125  9,  n. 
144  18.     'from  his  own  Shadow.'     See  143  4. 

144  29.  Your  Byron  publishes.  Carlyle's  opinion  of  Byron  is 
tersely  given  in  his  Journal.  "  Byron  we  call  '  a  dandy  of  sorrows 
and  acquainted  with  grief.' "  C.  E.  Z.,  II,  95.  Compare  Essays, 
Goethe's  Works,  \\\,  208.  "A  strong  man,  of  recent  time,  fights 
little  for  any  good  cause  anywhere  ;  works  weakly  as  an  English 
lord ;  weakly  delivers  himself  from  such  working ;  with  weak 
despondency  endures  the  cackling  of  plucked  geese  at  St.  James's  ; 
and  sitting  in  sunny  Italy,  in  his  coach-and-four,  at  a  distance  of 
two  thousand  miles  from  them,  writes  over  many  reams  of  paper 
the  following  sentence  with  variations :  .  Saw  ever  the  world  one 
greater  or  unhappier  ?  This  was  a  sham  strong  man."  Cp.  C.E.  Z., 
I,  221. 

Cap.  VII.  The  Everlasting  No.  The  subject  of  this  chapter 
was  suggested  to  Carlyle  by  his  reflections  on  the  death  of  his  uncle, 
Thomas  Carlyle,  June  9,  1816.  See  Rem.,  I,  34,  n.,  and  Introd. 
*'  Sapientia  prima  est  stultitia  cartiisse.  Fully  as  well  thus,  Stultitia 
prhna  est  sapientia  caruisse:  the  case  of  all  materialist  metaphy- 
sicians, most  utilitarians,  moralists,  and  generally  all  negative 
-philosophers,  by  whatever  name  they  call  themselves.  It  was  God 
that  said  Yes.  It  is  the  Devil  that  forever  says  No."  C.  E.  Z., 
I,  388.     See  also  153  13,  n.,  and  78  5,  n. 

145  9.     *Son  of  Time.'     See  111  22,  n. 

145  15.  the  Eagle.  "  St.  Augustine  says,  that  when  the  eagle 
becomes  very  old,  the  upper  mandible  of  the  beak  grows  so  long 
that  the  bird  can  no  longer  feed,  in  which  case  it  betakes  itself  to  a 
rock  or  rough  stone,  and  rubs  its  beak  till  the  overgrown  part  is 
ground  down  into  proper  proportion."  Domestic  Habits  of  Birds, 
p.  349.  Lond.,  1833.  S^^  St.  Augustine,  Comment,  in  Ps.  ciii.  5, 
Library  of  the  Fathers,  p.  45  f.     Lond.,  1853.     Migne,  xxxvii.  1323  f. 

145  26.  'excellent  Passivity.'  See  118  7.  —  reasonable  Activ- 
ity. "There  is  just  one  man  unhappy;  he  who  is  possessed  by 
some  idea  which  he  cannot  convert  into  action.  —  Goethe."  C.  E.  L., 

I,  384- 

146  4.     'ruddy  morning.'     See  93  12,  n. 

146  10.     based  upon  Hope.     "  Let  us  be  content ;    let  us  hope. 

Der  Mensch  ist  eigentlich  ajif  Hoffmuig  gestellt.     This  is  the  'Place 
of  Hope.'  "     C.-four.,  1832. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  VII.]  THE   EVERLASTING   NO.  347 

Hope  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast ; 
Man  never  is  but  always  to  be  blest. 

Pope,  Epist.,  i.  94  f. 

146  12.  'Place  of  Hope.'  This  phrase  is  familiar  to  those  who 
have  listened  to  Presbyterian  prayers.  "Let  us  not  mourn  as 
creatures  that  had  no  Hope.  We  are  creatures  that  had  an  All- 
Good  Creator  ;  and  this  earth  we  live  in  is  named  the  '  Place  of 
Hope.'  "     Lett.,  303  ;  cp.  ib.,  172,  and  C.  E.  L.,  II,  317. 

146  22.  Doubt  had  darkened.  "  Doubt  only,  pale  doubt,  rising 
like  a  spectral  shadow,  was  to  be  seen,  distorting  or  obscuring  the 
good  and  holy;  nay,  sometimes  hiding  the  very  Holy  of  Holies  from 
his  eye."     L.  W.  C,  IVotton  Rcinfred,  32. 

146  27.  Profit-and-Loss  Philosophy.  Utilitarianism.  "  But  what, 
then,  was  virtue  1  Another  name  for  happiness,  for  pleasure  .''  No 
longer  the  eternal  life  and  beauty  of  the  universe,  the  invisible  all- 
pervading  effluence  of  God  ;  but  a  poor  earthly  theorem,  a  balance 
of  profit  and  loss  resting  on  self-interest,  and  pretending  to  rest  on 
nothing  higher."  Z.  W.  C,  Wotton  Keinfred,  -^^Ty.  "  For  the  wise 
men,  who  now  appear  as  Political  Philosophers,  deal  exclusively 
with  the  Mechanical  province ;  and  occupying  themselves  in  count- 
ing up  and  estimating  men's  motives,  strive  by  curious  checking  and 
balancing,  and  other  adjustments  of  Profit  and  Loss,  to  guide  them 
to  their  true  advantage  :  while,  unfortunately,  those  same  '  motives  ' 
are  so  innumerable,  and  so  variable  in  every  individual,  that  no 
really  useful  conclusion  can  ever  be  drawn  from  their  enumeration." 
Essays,  Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  148  ;  cp.  149  4  ;  200  13,  n. 

146  28.     Soul  is  not.     Cp.  107  10,  n. 

146  31.     one  thing  needful.     See  Luke  x.  42. 

146  32.     endure  the  shame.     Heb.  xii.  2,  adapted. 

147  13.  Dr.  Graham.  James  (1745-1794);  famous  quack  doctor. 
His  "  celestial  bed  "  was  an  elaborate  structure,  which  was  guaran- 
teed to  cure  sterility  in  married  people  using  it.  See  Diet.  Nat. 
Biog.,  and  Jeaffreson,  Lady  Hamilton  and  Lord  Nelson,  I,  28  f. 
Lond.,  1888;  also  Melechsala,  C. -Trans.,  I,  161. 

147  16.     'chief  of  sinners.'     I  Tim.  i.  15,  adapted. 

147  17.  Nero  .  .  .  fiddling.  See  Suetonius,  In  N'ero.,  xxii. 
Tacitus,  Annal.,  1.  xvi.  cap.  iv. 

147  22.  Prometheus  Vinctus.  Usual  title  of  the  drama  of 
i^ischylus  based  on  the  myth  of  the  daring  demi-god  who  stole  fire 
from  heaven  for  the  benefit  of  mortals  ;  and  thereby  incurred  the 
anger  of  Zeus.     The  temper  of  the  hero   is  admirably  given  in  the 


34^  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  VII. 

opening  speech  of  Shelley's  Prometheus  Unbou7id,  and  Goethe's 
"Prometheus";  Vermisckte  Gedichte.  See  Hesiod,  Theogojiy,  11. 
624-750  (Valpy). 

147  29.  Happiness  be  our  true  aim.  "  Show  me  a  man  that  is 
happy  and  I  will  show  thee  a  man  that  has  —  an  excellent  nervous 
system.  Williams,  when  you  write  again,  it  should  be  an  essay  on 
the  Comforts  of  Stupidity:'  L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Reiiifred,  89 ;  cp. 
ib.,  T^i,  and  C.  E.  L.,  I,  3S9.     "  Had  you  ever  a  diseased  liver  ?  etc." 

148  2.  the  fat  things,  i  Cor.  ii.  9,  adapted  and  fused  with  this 
extract  from  his  Journal,  "  The  Devil  has  his  elect."  C.  E.  L.,  II, 
80. 

148  6.  Sibyl-cave  of  Destiny.  Alluding  to  the  visit  of  .-Eneas 
to  the  Sibyl.  See  yEneid,  vi.  11.  36  ff.  "(But)  a  deep  silence  reigns 
behind  this  curtain  ;  no  one  once  within  it  will  answer  those  he  has 
left  without ;  all  you  can  hear  is  a  hollow  echo  of  your  question,  as 
if  you  shouted  into  a  chasm."  Schiller,  Geisf  Seh^.,  iv.  350 ; 
C.-four.,  22  ;  cp.  Carlyle,  Life  of  Schiller,  p.  45.     Lond.,  1874. 

148  9.     Pillar  of  Cloud  .  .  .  Fire.     See  Exodus  xiii.  21,  22. 

148  14.  Siecle  de  Louis  Quinze.  To  be  exact.  Precis  du  Siecle 
de  Lonis  XV^h-^  \o\\.2\xQ.  "  Les  esprits  s'eclairerent  dans  le  siecle 
de  Louis  XIV.  et  dans  le  suivant  plus  que  dans  tous  les  siecles 
precedents."     lb.,  ch.  xlii.     It  was  the  age  of  the  Encyclopedie. 

148  22.     Unprofitable  servants.     See  Luke  xvii.  10. 

148  28.  Love  of  Truth.  Carlyle's  own  case.  See  C.  E.  L.,  I, 
67.  "  His  love  of  truth,  he  often  passionately  said,  had  ruined  him  ; 
yet  he  would  not  relinquish  the  search  to  whatever  abysses  it  might 
lead."     Z.  W.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  43. 

148  32.  Lubberland.  Translation  of  Schlaraffenland,  land  of 
sluggards.  "  Some  luxurious  Lubberland,  where  the  brooks  should 
run  wine,  and  the  trees  bend  A\dth  ready-baked  viands."  Essays,!!!^ 
32.  See  Hans  Sachs,  Das  Schlaraffe)ila)id.  A  favorite  word  of 
Carlyle's.  See  L.  IF.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  95;  C.  E .  L.,  I,  406,  445  ; 
C. -Trans.,  II,  125  ;  cp.  An  Invitation  to  Lnbberlajid,  T.  Ashton, 
Wit,  Hujnonr  and  Satire  of  the  Seventeenth  Centtay,  p.  34.  Lond., 
1883. 

148  34.     Handwriting  on  the  wall.     See  Dan.  v.  5-28. 

149  7.     without  God.     See  Eph.  ii.  12. 
149  10.     in  my  heart.     See  Prov.  vii.  3. 
149  17.    to  be  weak. 

Fallen  cherub,  to  be  weak  is  miserable. 
Doing  or  suffering  :  — 

Par.  Lost,  i.  157  f. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  VII.]  THE   EVERLASTING   NO.  349 

149  27.  Know  thyself.  VvCiQi  aeavrbv,  inscribed  in  letters  of 
gold  over  the  portico  of  the  temple  at  Delphi. 

149  28.  what  thou  canst  work  at.  The  resemblance  between 
this  and  Goethe's  second  maxim  can  hardly  be  accidental  : 

**  Wie  kann  man  sich  selbst  lernen  kennen  ?  Durch  Betrachten 
niemals,  wohl  aber  durch  Handeln.  Versuche  deine  Pflicht  zu  thun 
und  du  weisst  gleich  was  an  dir  ist."     Alaximen  u.  Reflexio7ten,  i. 

150  28.  my  own  heart.  "  He  abandoned  law  and  hurried  into 
the  country,  not  to  possess  his  soul  in  peace  as  he  had  hoped,  but 
in  truth,  like  Homer's  Bellerophoji  to  eat  his  own  heart."  L.  W.  C, 
Wotton  Rein/red,  43.  "  Cor  ne  edito  (eat  not  your  heart)  Pythag. 
These  are  from  Bacon."  C.-/our.,  p.  54.  Cp.  also  C.  E.  Z.,  II,  87. 
This  expression  is  found  in  Diog.  Laert.,  Vit.  Fhilos.,  viii. 

150  31.     Faust.     See  48  21,  n. 

150  34.  The  very  Devil.  Cp.  the  speech  of  Sandy  Mackaye, 
beginning  "  And  sae  the  deevil's  dead."     Alto7i  Locke,  cap.  xxii,  end. 

151  2.     To  me  the  Universe.     See  151  23,  n. 
151  6.     Golgotha.     See  Matt,  xxvii.  t,Z- 

151  14.  sickness  of  the  chronic  sort.  In  1819,  Carlyle  had  his 
first  severe  attack  of  dyspepsia.  See  C.  E.  Z.,  I,  78  f. ;  Retn.,  II, 
59  ;  E.  Lett.,  1 53. 

151  23.  From  Suicide.  The  thought  of  self-destruction  had 
occurred  to  Carlyle  in  his  years  of  depression.  "  My  curse  seems 
deeper  and  blacker  than  that  of  any  man  :  to  be  immured  in  a  rotten 
carcass,  every  avenue  of  which  is  changed  into  an  inlet  of  pain,  till 
my  intellect  is  obscured  and  weakened,  and  my  head  and  heart  are 
alike  desolate  and  dark.  How  have  I  deserved  this  ?  Or  is  it  mere 
fate  that  orders  these  things,  caring  no  jot  for  merit  or  demerit, 
crushing  our  poor  mortal  interests  among  its  ponderous  machinery, 
and  grinding  us  and  them  to  dust  relentlessly  }  I  know  not.  Shall 
I  ever  know  ?  Then  why  don't  you  kill  yourself,  sir  .?  Is  there  not 
arsenic  ?  is  there  not  ratsbane  of  various  kinds  ?  and  hemp  ?  and 
steel  ?  Most  true,  Sathanas,  all  these  things  are,  but  it  will  be  time 
enough  to  use  them  when  I  have  lost  the  game  which  I  am  yet  but 
losing.  You  observe,  sir,  I  have  still  a  glimmering  of  hope ;  and  while 
my  friends,  my  mother,  father,  brothers,  sisters  live,  the  duty  of  not 
breaking  their  hearts  would  still  remain  to  be  performed  when  hope 
had  utterly  fled.  For  which  reason  —  even  if  there  were  no  others, 
which,  however,  I  believe  there  are  —  the  benevolent  Sathanas  will 
excuse  me.  I  do  not  design  to  be  a  suicide.  God  in  heaven  forbid. 
That  way  I  was  never  tempted.     But  where  is  the  use  of  going  on 


35°  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  VII. 

like  this  ?     I  am  not  writing  like  a  reasonable  man."    /ownal,  Dec. 
31,  1823;   C.  E.  L.,  I,  205.     For  similar  mood,  cp.  The  Two  Voices. 
152  7.     Faust's  Deathsong.     Carlyle  has  quoted  from  memory, 
inaccurately. 

Mephistopheles. 

Unci  doch  ist  nie  der  Tod  ein  ganz  willkommner  Cast. 

Faust. 

O  selig  der,  dem  er  im  Siegesglanze 

Die  blut'gen  Lorbeern  urn  die  Schlafe  windet, 

Den  er  nach  rasch  durchras'tem  Tanze 

In  eines  Rladchens  Armen  findet. 

Faust,  sc.  4,  11.  1572-1576. 

152  18.  As  if  all  things  in  the  Heavens.  "He  once  quotes 
from  Montaigne  the  following,  as  Sceptic's  viaticum  :  '  I  plunge 
stupidly,  head  foremost,  into  this  dumb  Deep,  which  swallows  me, 
and  chokes  me,  in  a  moment,  —  full  of  insipidity  and  indolence.'  " 
Essays,  Diderot,  III,  307. 

'T  were  best  at  once  to  sink  to  peace. 

Like  birds  the  charming  serpent  draws, 

To  drop  head  foremost  in  the  jaws 
Of  vacant  darkness  and  to  cease. 

Iti  Me7noriajn,  xxiv.  4. 

See  Exodus  xx.  4. 

152  23.  Full  of  such  humour.  "  Nothing  in  '  Sartor  Resartus  ' 
(he  says)  is  fact  ;  symbolical  myth  all,  except  that  of  the  incident  in 
the  Rue  St.  Thomas  de  I'Enfer,  which  occurred  quite  literally  to 
myself  in  Leith  Walk,  during  three  weeks  of  total  sleeplessness,  in 
which  almost  my  one  solace  was  that  of  a  daily  bathe  on  the  sands 
between  Leith  and  Portobello.  Incident  was  as  I  went  down  ; 
coming  up  I  generally  felt  refreshed  for  the  hour.  I  remember  it 
well  and  could  go  straight  to  the  place."  C.  E.  L.,  I,  103.  "  It  was 
in  no  sense  a  conversion  to  any  belief  in  person  or  creed,  it  was  but 
the  assertion  of  a  strong  manhood  against  an  almost  suicidal  mood 
of  despair  ;  a  condition  set  forth  with  a  superabundant  paraphernalia 
of  eloquence  easily  condensed."  J.  Nichol,  Thomas  Carlyle,  p.  32. 
N.  Y.,  1892.  Cp.  179  14,  n.,  and  M.  D.  Conway,  Thomas  Carlyle, 
p.  45-     N.  Y.,  1 88 1. 

152  28.     Nebuchadnezzar's  Furnace.     See  Daniel  iii.  19. 

153  13.  the  Everlasting  No.  This  phrase  is  often  misunder- 
stood to  mean    the    'protest'  of  the    hero, -instead    of  the  sum  of 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  VIII.J      CENTRE  OF  INDIFFERENCE.  351 

facts    adverse   to    the   idea   of   moral  order   in  the   universe.     See 
J.  Burroughs  in    The  Century,  vol.  27,  930,  and  id.,  vol  26,  540  b. 
153  15.    my  whole  Me. 

A  warmth  within  tlie  breast  would  melt 

The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 

And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answer'd,  "  I  have  felt." 

In  Mejiioriavi,  cxxiv.  4. 

153  26.  Baphometic.  From  Baphomet,  "  The  imaginary  idol  or 
symbol  which  the  Templars  were  accused  of  worshipping.  By  some 
modern  writers  the  Templars  are  charged  with  a  depraved  form  of 
Gnosticism,  and  the  word  Baphomet  has  had  given  to  it  the  signifi- 
cation of  baptism  of  wisdom  (as  if  <;  Gr.  /Sa0^,  baptism,  +  iiy)TL%, 
wisdom),  baptism  of  fire  ;  in  other  words  the  Gnostic  baptism,  a 
species  of  spiritual  illumination.  But  this  and  other  guesses  are  of 
no  value.  The  word  may  be  a  manipulated  form  of  Mahomet,  a 
name  which  took  strange  shapes  in  the  middle  ages."  Coitiuy  Diet. 
Carlyle  encountered  the  name  Baffometus  in  the  '  Story  of  the 
Fallen  Master '  translated  by  him  from  Werner's  Templars  in 
Cyprus.     Essays,  I,  105. 

154  3.     '  Indignation  and  Defiance.     See  153  12. 
154  9.     Baphometic  Baptism.     See  153  26,  n. 
154  15.     Rue  St.  Thomas.     See  152  23,  n. 

154  16.     Satanic  School.     See  135  9,  n. 

154  18.     Ernulphus-cursings.      Tristram  Shandy,  bk.  iii.  cap.  ii., 
contains  the  curse  in  full.     See  also  Lett.,  219  ;   C.  E.  L.,  I,  203. 
154  24.    method  in  their  madness, 

Pol.    Though  this  be  madness,  yet  there  is  method  in't. 

Hajnlei,  ii.  2. 

154  28.     Saints'  Wells.     See  142  33. 

155  2.     'eat  his  own  heart.'     See  150  28,  n. 

155  3.  Not-Me.  Das  Nicht-Ich.  The  metaphysical  term  for 
the  outer  world,  all  that  is  not  "  the  conscious  subject  of  experi- 
ence."    Cp.  48  14,  n.;  see  Essays,  A'ovalis,  II,  104. 

156  1.     Cain  and  Tubalcain.     See  Gen.  iv.  2  and  22. 

156  8.  Schonbninn.  A  royal  palace  outside  of  Vienna.  The 
treaty  of  Vienna  was  signed  here.  —  Downing  Street.  That  part 
of  Westminster  containing  the  chief  offices  of  the  English  Govern- 
ment. —  Palais  Bourbon.     The  French  Downing  Street. 

156  17.     Armida's  Palace.      The   home   of   the    enchantress   in 


352  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  VIII. 

T 2iSso' 5  Jertisal em  Delivered  (bk.  xvi).     The  description  is  imitated 
and  largely  translated  by  Spenser,  Faery  Queene,  ii.  12. 
157  8.    marble  and  metal, 

Exegi  monumentum  acre  perennius 
Regalique  situ  pyramidum  altius. 

Horace,  Carm.,  iii.  30. 

157  13.  Geeza  .  .  .  Sacchara.  Usual  spelling  Ghizeh,  Sakkara, 
near  Cairo. 

157  21.  Wagram.  A  village  ten  miles  N.E.  of  Vienna  where 
Napoleon  defeated  the  Austrians,  July  5,  6,  1809. 

157  24.  Marchfeld.  The  March  rises  in  the  Sudeten  Gebirge  and 
joins  the  Danube  near  the  Hungarian  border,  below  Vienna.  "  It  was 
on  this  famous  plain  of  the  Marchfeld  that  Ottocar,  King  of  Bohemia, 
conquered  Bela  of  Hungary  in  1260;  and  was  himself  in  1278  con- 
quered and  slain  by  Rudolf  of  Hapsburg,  at  that  time  much  left  to 
his  own  resources  ;  whose  talent  for  mending  helmets,  however,  is 
perhaps  but  a  poetical  tradition.  Curious,  moreover :  it  was  here 
again,  after  more  than  five  centuries,  that  the  house  of  Hapsburg 
received  its  worse  overthrow,  and  from  a  new  and  greater  Rudolf, 
namely,  from  Napoleon  at  Wagram,  which  lies  in  the  middle  of  this 
same  Marchfeld."     Essays,  Early  German  Literature,  II,  358,  n. 

158  6.  Stillfrieds.  An  armistice  followed  the  victory  of  Wag- 
ram.    See  157  21,  n. 

158  16.     Place  of  Sculls.     See  151  6,  n. 

158  25.  the  net  purport.  The  following  is  an  excellent  exam- 
ple of  Carlyle's  power  to  give  his  ideas  body  and  color  and  life  : 
Waterloo  had  tended  to  make  England  arrogant,  and  about 
1830  the  moralists  try  to  check  her  military  pride.  For  similar 
attitude,  compare  Thackeray's  Chronicle  of  the  Drnm,  and  his  minor 
works  passim. 

158  28.  Dumdnidge.  Carlylese  coinage;  dumb  drudgery  being 
the  constant  state  of  the  working  class.  What  Carlyle  describes 
took  place  in  hundreds  of  Dumdrudges  all  over  Great  Britain  during 
the  Peninsular  war,  when  the  walnut  trees  were  all  cut  down  to 
make  stocks  for  muskets. 

158  29.  "Natural  Enemies."  A  phrase  of  the  time  used  by 
the  English  of  the  French.  It  occurs  frequently  in  literature  and 
journalism  during  the  Napoleonic  wars. 

159  23.  "  what  devilry  soever."  The  usual  form  of  this  prov- 
erb is  "  They  who  dance  must  pay  the  piper." 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  VIII.]     CENTRE    OF  INDIFFERENCE.  t^c^-^, 

160  12.     Satanic  School.     See  135  9,  n. 

160  25.  Like  the  great  Hadrian.  "Think  first,  with  blessings 
and  reverence,  of  the  imperial  wanderer  Hadrian,  who  on  foot,  at 
the  head  of  his  army,  paced  out  the  circle  of  the  world  which  was 
subject  to  him,  and  thus  in  very  deed  took  possession  of  it." 
Carlyle,  Meister''s  Travels,  cap.  last. 

160  31.  Vaucluse.  Valla  Chiusa,  near  Avignon.  Alison  thinks 
it  owes  its  beauty  to  the  fact  that  Petrarch  resided  there.  Essay  on 
Taste,  i.  25.     Lond.,  18 17. 

161  3.  Kings  sweated  down.  In  1806,  Napoleon  issued  the 
Berlin  and  Milan  decrees  ordering  the  seizure  of  all  British  exports 
and  of  vessels  which  had  touched  at  any  British  port.  The  measure 
was  intended  to  exclude  English  commerce  from  the  Continent  and 
destroy  the  carrying  trade  of  Britain.  As  Europe  was  at  this  time 
Tinder  the  control  of  Napoleon,  the  different  monarchs  were,  in 
Carlyle's  opinion,  no  better  than  landing-waiters  compelled  to 
enforce  these  customs  regulations. 

161  5.  the  World  well  lost.  An  allusion  to  Dryden's  tragedy, 
"  All  for  Love,  or  the  World  Well  Lost  "  (1668). 

161  7.     All  kindreds.     Rev.  xiii.  7,  adapted. 

161  15.  Great  men.  This  doctrine  is  expanded  in  Heroes  and 
Hero-  Worship. 

161  25.  Tree  at  Triesnitz.  So  Carlyle  spells  it  (correctly)  in 
his  Life  of  Schiller.  "  On  such  subjects  they  often  corresponded 
when  absent,  and  conversed  when  together.  They  were  in  the  habit 
of  paying  long  visits  to  each  other's  houses ;  frequently  they  used 
to  travel  in  company  between  Jena  and  Weimar.  *  At  Triesnitz, 
a  couple  of  English  miles  from  Jena,  Goethe  and  he,'  we  are  told, 
*  might  sometimes  be  observed  sitting  at  table,  beneath  the  shade  of 
a  spreading  tree,  talking  and  looking  at  the  current  of  passengers.'  " 
Carlyle,  Life  of  Schiller,  p.  108.     London,  1874. 

162  3.  Pope  Pius.  Most  probably  Pius  VII.,  who  was  pope 
from  1800  to  1823,  was  forced  to  crown  Bonaparte  emperor,  was 
afterwards  taken  prisoner  by  him,  and  deprived  of  his  power  as  a 
temporal  prince. — Tarakwang.  The  emperor  of  China,  Taou- 
kwang,  began  his  reign  in  1820.  Many  rebellions  arose  on  account 
of  his  slackness  and  inefficiency.  See  Rev.  Charles  Gutzlaff,  Life  of 
Taoiikwang.  Lond.,  1852.  The  struggle  with  the  Water  Lily  fac- 
tion (Pe-lien-keaou)  lasted  eight  years. 

162  12.  'Ideologist.'  "He  (Napoleon)  had  no  longer  for  adver- 
saries the  few  who  remained  faithful    to  the  political  object  of  the 


354  AZOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  VIII. 

revolution,  and  whom  he  styled  ideologists."  Mignet,  History  of 
the  French  Revolution,  p.  401.     (Bohn.) 

162  1-1.  in  the  Idea.  "Napoleon,  der  ganz  in  der  Idee  lebte, 
konnte  sie  doch  im  Bewusstsein  nicht  erfassen."  "  In  der  Idee 
leben  heisst  das  Unmogliche  behandeln,  als  wenn  es  moglich  ware." 
Goethe,  Maxi??ien  u.  Reflcxioiioi,  iv. 

162  18.  La  carriere.  See  Heroes  and  Hero -Worship,  p.  220. 
Lend.,  1874. 

164  10.  men  alike  tall.  Similar  passage  with  different  turn,  in 
a  translation  from  Die  Rdtiber,  Essays,  II,  286. 

164  13.     Goliath.     See  i  Sam.  xvii.  4-54. 

164  26.  Hugo  of  Trimberg.  Schoolmaster  at  Bamberg,  1260- 
1309;  author  of  Der  Renner ;  a  moralist.  See  Q.-a.\\^\q,  Essays, 
Early  Germa7i  Literature,  II,  369-376.  —  God  must  needs.  "  To 
a  Schoolmaster,  with  empty  larder,  the  pomp  of  tournaments  could 
never  have  been  specially  interesting ;  but  now  such  passages  of 
arms,  how  free  and  gallant  soever,  appear  to  him  no  other  than 
the  probable  product  of  delirium.  '  God  might  well  laugh,  could 
it  be,'  says  he,  '  to  see  his  mannikins  live  so  wondrously  upon  this 
Earth  ;  two  of  them  will  take  to  fighting  and  nowise  let  it  alone  ; 
nothing  serves  but  with  two  long  speais  they  must  ride  and  stick  at 
one  another  :  greatly  to  their  hurt;  for  when  one  is  by  the  other 
skewered  through  the  bowels  or  through  the  weasand,  he  hath  small 
profit  thereby.  But  who  forced  them  to  such  straits  .'' '  The  answer 
is  too  plain  :  some  modification  of  Insanity."  Essays,  Early  German 
Literature,  II,  374  f. 

164  32.     Legion.     See  Mark  v.  9. 

165  7.     Satanic  School.     See  135  9,  n. 
165  22.     Boy  Alexander. 

Unus  Pellaeo  iuveni  non  sufficit  orbis  ; 

Aestuat  iufelix  angusto  limite  mundi 

Ut  Gyari  clausus  scopulis  parvaque  Seripho. 

Juvenal,  Sat.,  x.  168. 

165  25.  Ach  Gott,  when  I  gazed.  "  He  stood  gazing  out  upon 
the  starry  night.  The  old  man  approached,  but  he  knew  not  what 
to  say.  '  Do  they  not  look  down  on  us  as  if  with  pity  from  their 
serene  spaces,'  said  Reinfred,  '  like  eyes  glistening  with  heavenly 
tears  over  the  poor  perplexities  of  man  !  Ilerrliche  Gefiihle  erstar- 
ren  in,  etc'  Their  brightness  is  not  bedimmed  by  any  vapour,  the 
mists  of  our  troubled  planet   do   not   reach   them.     Thousands    of 


Bk.  II.  Cap.  IX.]       THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  355 

human  generations,  all  as  noisy  as  our  own,  have  been  engulfed  in 
the  abyss  of  time,  and  there  is  no  wreck  of  them  seen  any  more  ; 
and  Arcturus  and  Orion  and  the  Pleiades  are  still  shining  in  their 
courses,  clear  and  young  as  when  the  shepherd  first  noted  them  on 
the  plain  of  Shinar."     L.  W.  C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  9. 

165  34.  Dog-cage.  A  wheel  into  which  the  turnspit  was  put,  to 
turn  the  jack  and  roast  the  meat.  See  Chambers's  Book  of  Days, 
I,  490,  for  picture  of  it. 

166  5.  dissevered  limb.  "  I  am  a '  dismembered  limb,'  and  feel 
it  again  too  deeply.  Was  I  ever  other  ?  "  Joitrnal,  Jan.  14,  1830  ; 
C.  E.  L.,\\,^\.  "At  present  I  am  but  an  abgerissenes  died,  a 
limb  torn  off  from  the  family  of  Man,  excluded  from  activity,  with 
Pain  for  my  companion  and  Hope  that  comes  to  all  rarely  visiting 
me,  and  what  is  stranger  rarely  desired  with  vehemence."  C.-Jotir., 
p.  30.     Hoddam  Hill,  Sept.  21,  1S25.     Cp.  C.  E.  L.,  I,  323. 

166  13.  Temptations.     See  Luke  iv.  i,  2. 

166  15.  old  Adam.     See  i  Cor.  xv.  45,  and  Col.  iii.  9. 

166  20.  Work  thou.     Apparently  2   Thess.  iii.  13,  adapted. 

167  4.  carried  of  the  spirit.     See  Luke  iv.  i. 
167  12.  divine  handwriting.     See  148  34,  n. 

167  15-17.     Wilderness  .  .  .  Forty  Days.     See  166  13,  n. 

168  8.     shadow-hunting.     See  l-ff  6-I8. 
168  11.     Temptation.     See  166  13. 

168  13.     Rue  de  PEnfer.     See  152  23,  n. 

168  16.  Apage  Satana.  Transliteration  of  U7ra7e  a-arava,  Matt. 
iv.  10,  of  the  Septuagint.  The  Latin  versions  are  '  abi '  or  *  abscede  ' 
or  *  vade '. 

168  22.     Holy-of-Holies.     See  90  1,  n.,  58  18,  n. 

168  32.  hot  Harmattan  wind.  "  His  soul  seems  once  to  have 
been  rich  and  glorious,  like  the  garden  of  Eden  ;  but  the  desert-wind 
has  passed  over  it  and  smitten  it  with  perpetual  blight."  Carlyle, 
Lz/e  of  Schille)',  p.  57.  Lond.,  1874.  "Whatever  belonged  to  the 
finer  nature  of  man  had  withered  under  the  Harmattan  breath  of 
Doubt,  or  passed  away  in  the  conflagration  of  open  Infidelity." 
Essays,  Goethe,  I,  223. 

169  13.     new  Heaven.     See  Rev.  xxi.  i. 

169  14.  Annihilation  of  Self.  This  is  distinctively  Christian 
doctrine. 

169  18.  healing  sleep.     See  above,  1.  12. 

169  19.  Pilgrim-staff.     See  135  16,  n. 

169  20.  'high  table-land.'     See  below,  1.  29. 


356  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  IX. 

170  27.  Schreckhorn.  I'eak  of  Terror.  Several  mountains 
bear  this  name  in  the  Bernese  Alps. 

170  29.  mad  witch's  hair.  Apparently  a  recollection  of  Man- 
fred, act  ii.  sc.  2. 

170  32.  How  thou  fermentest.  One  of  vSchmelzle's  terrors  was 
the  dread  of  a  'ferment '  in  the  air.     See  C.-Trans.,  II,  92-94. 

171  2.     Living  Garment.     See  48  92. 

171  8.  Sweeter  than  Dayspring.  The  expedition  of  15arendz 
left  Amsterdam  in  May  1 596  and  was  wrecked  on  Nova  Zembla. 
Seventeen  men  lived  through  the  winter.  Barendz,  who  died  on  the 
way  home,  left  a  journal,  and  it  is  to  this  entry  in  it  that  Carlyle 
refers.  "  On  January  27,  we  saw  it  mounting  in  all  its  roundness  on 
the  horizon,  which  rendered  us  very  happy.  We  thank  God  for  the 
mercy  He  vouchsafed  to  us  by  restoring  the  light." 

171  22.     Wipe  away  all  tears.     See  Rev.  xxi.  4. 

171  33.  **  Sanctuary  of  Sorrow."  Goethean  phrase.  "  I  invite 
you  to  return  hither  at  the  end  of  a  year,  to  visit  our  general  festival, 
and  see  how  far  your  son  is  advanced  ;  then  shall  you  be  admitted 
into  the  Sanctuary  of  Sorrow." 

"  Permit  me  one  question,"  said  Wilhelm  :  "  As  you  have  set  up 
the  life  of  this  divine  Man  for  a  pattern  and  example,  have  you  like- 
wise selected  his  sufferings,  his  death,  as  a  model  of  exalted 
patience  }  " 

"  Undoubtedly  we  have,"  replied  the  Eldest.  "  Of  this  we  make 
no  secret  :  but  we  draw  a  veil  over  those  sufferings,  even  because 
we  reverence  them  so  highly.  We  hold  it  a  damnable  audacity  to 
bring  forth  the  torturing  Cross,  and  the  Holy  One  who  suffers  on  it, 
or  to  expose  them  to  the  light  of  the  sun,  which  hid  its  face  when  a 
reckless  world  forced  such  a  sight  on  it ;  to  take  these  mysterious 
secrets,  in  which  the  divine  depth  of  Sorrow  lies  hid,  and  play  with 
them,  fondle  them,  trick  them  out,  and  rest  not  till  the  most  rever- 
end of  all  solemnities  appears  vulgar  and  paltry."  Meister's  Travels, 
cap.  xi.,  Carlyle's  translation  ;  see  Lett.,  301  ;   C.  E.  L.,  II,  260. 

172  1.    Divine  Depth  of  Sorrow.     See  171  33,  n. 

172  21.     Man's  Unhappiness.  This  is  also  Browning's  philosophy. 
172  29.     Soul  .  .   .  Stomach.     See  107  10,  n. 

172  34.     Ophiuchus. 

And  like  a  comet  burn'd 
That  fires  the  length  of  Ophiuchus  huge 
In  th'  Arctic  sky. 

Par.  Lost,  ii.  708. 

173  8.     Shadow  of  Ourselves.     See  143  4. 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  IX.]       THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  357 

173  9.  But  the  whim  we  have.  "When  we  speak  of  happi- 
ness and  being  happy,  we  half  unconsciously  mean  some  extra 
enjoyment,  if  I  may  say  so,  pleasure,  some  series  of  agreeable  sensa- 
tion, superadded  to  the  ordinary  pleasure  of  existing,  which  really,  if 
free  from  positive  pain,  is  all  we  have  right  to  pretend  to.  In  place 
of  reckoning  ourselves  happy  when  we  are  not  miserable,  we  reckon 
ourselves  miserable  when  not  happy.  A  proceeding,  if  you  think  of 
it,  quite  against  rule  !  What  claim  have  I  to  be  in  raptures  .-*  None 
in  the  world,  except  that  I  have  taken  such  a  whim  into  my  own 
wise  head  ;  and  having  got  so  much,  I  feel  as  if  I  could  never  get 
my  due 

"  And  so  when  the  young  gentleman  goes  forth  into  the  world, 
and  finds  that  it  is  really  and  truly  not  made  of  wax,  but  of  stone 
and  metal,  and  will  keep  its  own  shape,  let  the  young  gentleman 
fume  as  he  likes  ;  bless  us,  what  a  storm  he  gets  into  !  What  terrible 
elegies  and  pindarics  and  Childe  Harolds  and  Sorrows  of  Werter  ! 
O  devil  take  it.  Providence  is  in  the  wrong ;  has  used  him  (sweet, 
meritorious  gentleman)  unjustly.  He  will  bring  his  action  of 
damages  against  Providence  !  Trust  me  a  hopeful  lawsuit !  "  L.  W.  C, 
Wotton  Rein/red,  92-94  ;  cp.  ib.  i. 

173  28.  the  Fraction  of  Life.  See  116  24,  n.  "  The  fraction  of 
life  will  increase  equally  by  diminishing  the  denominator  as  by 
augmenting  the  numerator.     [March  1827.]  —  C.-fotcr.,  p.  46. 

173  34.  It  is  only  with  Renunciation.  The  exact  reference  to 
Goethe  has  eluded  me ;  but  cp.  sub-title  to  Wilhelm  Meister''s 
Wandei-jahre  and  Wahrheit  ti.  Dicht.,  bk.  xvi.,  "  Unser  physisches 
sowohl  als  geselliges  Leben,  Sitten,  Gewohnheiten,  Weltklugheit, 
Philosophic,  Religion,  ja  so  manches  zufallige  Ereigniss,  Alles  ruft 
uns  zu:  dass  xvir  entsagen  sollen.''''  With  Carlyle,  Entsagen  "means 
briefly  a  resolution  fixedly  and  clearly  made  to  do  without  the 
various  pleasant  things  —  wealth,  promotion,  fame,  honour,  and  the 
other  prizes  with  which  the  world  rewards  the  services  v/hich  it  appre- 
ciates." See  C.  E.  Z.,  II,  355,  n.,  and  ib.,  268  ;  also  Nichol,  Thomas 
Carlyle,  231  ;  N.  Y.,  1892  ;  Moncure  Conway,  Thomas  Carlyle,  81; 
N.  Y.  1 88 1;  and  Essays,  Novalis,  II,  93. 

174  9.  What  Act  of  Legislature.  "  There  is  no  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment in  Heaven's  Chancery  that  you  or  I  are  to  be  rich  men  or 
famous  men  ;  only  the  sternest  and  solemnest  enactment  that  we 
are  to  be  good  men,  '  diligent  in  business  and  fervent  in  spirit '  — 
reverencing  the  inscrutable  God,  and  '  friendly  at  once  and  fearless 
towards  all  that  God  has  made.'  "     Lett.,  163  ;  May  i,  1830. 


358  NOTES.  [Bk.  II,  Cap.  IX. 

174  17  Es  leuchtet  mir  ein.  In  his  essay  on  Goethe  in  1828, 
Carlyle  praised  especially  the  tenth  and  eleventh  chapters  of  Wan- 
derjahre  {Essays^  I,  240)  and  quoted  largely  from  them.  It  is  not 
surprising  to  find  here  Goethe's  very  words.  Cp.  Wilhelm  Meister's 
Wandcrjahre,  bk.  i.  cap.  2,  p.  382  ;  Goethe,  Sdjn?ntl.  lVe7'k^,  III  ; 
Stuttgart,  1854;  and  Meister's  Travels,  p.  207  ;  Lond.,  1868. 

175  1.     Love  not  Pleasure.       2  Tim.  iii.  4,  adapted. 

175  9.  Zeno.  A  Greek  Stoic  philosopher  of  the  5th  century. 
"This  was  the  manner  of  his  end.  As  he  left  his  school  he  fell  and 
broke  his  finger.  At  once  he  began  to  strike  the  earth  with  his 
hand,  and  reciting  this  verse  from  the  tragedy  of  Niobe,  '  I  come, 
why  dost  thou  call  me  .'' '  he  hanged  himself."  Diog.  Laert.,  Vit. 
PAilos.,  vii.  Carlyle  is  not  quite  correct  as  to  the  'trampling.'  He 
may  have  been  thinking  of  Diogenes  trampling  on  the  pride  of 
Plato,  i.e.,  his  curtains.  See  Ritter,  III,  450  ff.     Oxford,  1839. 

175  9.     Greater  than  Zeno.     See  Matt.  xii.  41,  42. 

175  10.  "Worship  of  Sorrow."  "Christianity,  the  'Worship 
of  Sorrow,'  has  been  recognized  as  divine,  on  far  other  grounds  than 
'  Essays  on  Miracles,'  and  by  considerations  infinitely  deeper  than 
would  avail  in  any  mere  '  trial  by  jury.'  "     Essays,  Voltaire,  II,  67. 

175  13.     doleful  creatures.     See  Isa.  xiii.  21. 

175  24.     Baal-Priests.     See  i  Kings  xviii.  17-40. 

175  27.  Herr  von  Voltaire.     See  Essays,  II,  5-78. 

176  3.  Wilt  thou  help  us.  "  His  (Voltaire's)  task  was  not  one  of 
Affirmation,  but  of  Denial  ;  not  a  task  of  erecting  and  rearing  up, 
which  is  slow  and  laborious  ;  but  of  destroying  and  overturning, 
which  in  most  cases  is  rapid  and  far  easier.  The  force  necessary 
for  him  was  nowise  a  great  and  noble  one  ;  but  a  small,  in  some 
respects  a  mean  one ;  to  be  nimbly  and  seasonably  put  in  use.  The 
Ephesian  Temple,  which  it  had  employed  many  wise  heads  and 
strong  arms  for  a  lifetime  to  build,  could  be  z^;/built  by  one  mad- 
man in  a  single  hour."     Essays,  Voltaire,  II,  69. 

176  13.     Worship  of  Sorrow.     See  175  10,  n. 

176  20.  "Plenary  Inspiration."  "  His  polemical  procedure  .  .  . 
turns  we  believe  exclusively  on  one  point  :  what  Theologians  have 
called  the  '  plenary  Inspiration  of  the  Scriptures.'  This  is  the  single 
wall  against  which,  through  long  years,  and  with  innumerable  batter- 
ing-rams and  catapults  and  pop-guns,  he  unweariedly  batters.  Con- 
cede him  this  and  his  ram  swings  freely  to  and  fro  through  space  : 
there  is  nothing  farther  it  can  even  aim  at.  That  the  Sacred  Books 
could  be  aught  else  than  a  Bank-of-Faith  Bill,  for  such   and  such 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  IX.]      THE   EVERLASTING    YEA.  359 

quantities  of  Enjoyment,  payable  at  sight  in  the  other  world,  value 
received ;  which  bill  becomes  waste  paper,  the  stamp  being  ques- 
tioned :  —  that  the  Christian  Religion  could  have  any  deeper  foun- 
dation than  Books,  could  possibly  be  written  in  the  purest  nature  of 
man,  in  mysterious,  ineffaceable  characters,  to  which  Books  and  all 
Revelations,  and  authentic  traditions,  were  but  a  subsidiary  matter, 
were  but  as  the  light  whereby  that  divine  writing  was  to  be  read  ;  — 
nothing  of  this  seems  to  have,  even  in  the  faintest  manner,  occurred 
to  him."     Essays,  Voltaire,  II,  66  f. 

176  32.     internecine  warfare.     Cp.  78  5,  n.;  10  31,  n, 

177  7.  *  feast  of  shells.'  "  What  is  the  English  of  all  quarrels 
that  have  been,  are,  or  can  be,  between  man  and  man  }  Simply  this, 
Sir,  you  are  taking  more  than  your  share  of  pleasure  in  the  world, 
something  from  my  share  ;  and  by  the  gods  you  shall  not  —  nay,  I 
will  fight  you  rather.  Alas  !  and  the  whole  lot  to  be  divided  is  such 
a  beggarly  account  of  empty  boxes,  truly  a  '  feast  of  shells,'  not 
eggs,  for  the  yolks  have  all  been  blown  out  of  them.  Not  enough 
to  fill  half  a  stomach,  and  the  whole  human  species  famishing  to  be 
at  them.  Better  we  should  say  to  our  brother,  '  Take  it,  poor 
fellow,  take  that  larger  share  which  I  reckon  mine,  and  which  thou 
so  wantest  ;  take  it  with  a  blessing.  Would  to  Heaven  I  had  but 
enough  for  thee.'  "    Journal,  Jan.  14,  1830  ;  C.  E.  L.,  II,  81. 

'  177  14.  If  Fichte's  Wis'senschaftslehre.  "Die  katholische 
Religion  ist  gewissermassen  schon  angewandte  christliche  Religion. 
Auch  die  Fichtesche  Philosophic  ist  vielleicht  angewandter  Christi- 
anismus."     Novalis, 11,  194.     Berlin,  1826.     C'p.  Essays,  II,  121. 

The  passage  quoted  in  preceding  note  ends  as  follows  :  "  This 
is  the  moral  of  the  Christian  religion  ;  how  easy  to  write,  how  hard 
to  practise." 

"  Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  is  the  first  of  the  great  successors  of 
Kant.  .  .  .  The  story  of  his  life  is  one  of  order,  poverty,  high 
aims,  brilliant  literary  success,  bitter  conflicts  and  an  untimely  death 
in  his  country's  service.  For  at  the  close  of  his  career,  during  the 
great  war  of  liberation,  in  181 3,  he  and  his  devoted  wife  busied 
themselves  in  the  encouragement  of  the  warriors  and  in  the  care  of 
the  wounded.  .  .  .  His  wife,  while  nursing  wounded  soldiers,  was 
stricken  with  typhus  fever.  She  recovered,  but  the  contagion  had 
already  passed  to  Fichte,  to  whom  it  proved  fatal,  in  January,  18 14. 
A  nobler  death,  in  a  more  heroic  time,  was  scarcely  possible  to  a 
professor  of  philosophy  and  a  patriot."  Royce,  Spirit  of  Modern 
Philosophy,  p.  146.     Boston,  1892. 


360  NOTES.  [Bk.  Il.Cap.  X. 

177  17.  Whole  Duty  of  Man.  A  book  of  moral  and  religious 
instruction  published  in  1659,  anonymously.  It  has  gone  through 
numerous  editions  and  continues  popular  to  the  present  day.  The 
author  remains  unknown.     Cp.  253  8. 

177  26.  Doubt  of  any  sort.  Prof.  Blackie  gives  this  maxim  in 
almost  these  words,  in  his  Wisdom  of  Goethe,  p.  4,  N.  Y.,  1884, 
but  does  not  identify  it. 

177  31.  "Do  the  Duty  which  lies  nearest  thee."  "The  safe 
plan  is  always  simply  to  do  the  task  that  lies  nearest  us."  Carlyle, 
Meister's  Apprenticeship,  vii.  i ;  cp.  ib.,  3. 

178  5.  Lothario.  "  The  reposing  polished  manhood  of  Lotha- 
rio." Essays,  Goethe,  I,  231.  "I  recollect  the  letter  which  you  sent 
me  from  the  Western  world,"  said  Jarno.  "  It  contained  the  words  : 
'  I  will  return,  and  in  my  house,  amid  my  fields,  among  my  people, 
I  will  say :  Hej'c  or  nowhere  is  America  !  '  "  Carlyle,  Meister's 
Apprenticeship,  vii.  3. 

178  19.     'here  or  nowhere.'     See  above,  178  5,  n. 
178  21.    the  beginning  of  Creation.     See  Gen.  i.  3.      See  also 
1.25. 

178  21.     Till  the  eye.     Based  on  Matt.  vi.  22,  23. 

179  5.  Whatsoever  thy  hand.  Eccles.  ix.  10,  and  John  ix.  4, 
joined  and  adapted.      Cp.  Goethe,  West-ost.  Divan,  Hikmet  Nameh. 

179  14.  Conversion.  The  year  1825,  which  Carlyle  spent  at 
Hoddam  Hill,  was  "perhaps  the  most  triumphantly  important  of  my 
life."  Rem.,  II,  179.  "The  final  chaining  down,  trampling  home 
'for  good,'  home  into  their  caves  for  ever  of  all  my  spiritual  dragons, 
which  had  wrought  me  such  woe,  and  for  a  decade  past  had  made 
my  life  black  and  bitter.  (Footnote.  First  battle,  one  in  the  Rue 
de  I'Enfer —  Leith  Walk  —  four  years  before.  Campaign  not  ended 
till  now.)  This  year  1826  saw  the  end  of  all  that,  with  such  a 
feeling  on  my  part  as  may  be  fancied.  I  found  it  to  be  essen- 
tially what  Methodist  people  call  their  '  conversion,'  the  deliverance 
of  their  souls  from  the  Devil  and  the  pit !  precisely  enough  that,  in 
new  form.  And  there  burnt  accordingly  a  sacred  flame  of  joy  in 
me,  silent  in  my  inmost  being,  as  of  one  henceforth  superior  to  fate, 
able  to  look  down  on  its  stupid  injuries  ^vith  contempt,  pardon, 
and  almost  with  a  kind  of  thanks  and  pity."  C.  E.  L.,  I,  342  f. 
"  I  understood  well  what  the  old  Christian  people  meant  by  their 
'  Conversion  '  by  God's  Infinite  Mercy  to  them  :  —  I  had  in  effect 
gained  an  immense  victory  ;  and,  for  a  number  of  years,  had,  in 
spite  of  nerves  and  chagrins,  a  constant  inward  happiness  that  was 


Bk.  II,  Cap.  X.]  PAUSE.  361 

quite  royal  and  supreme ;  in  which  all  temporal  evil  was  transient 
and   insignificant."     Rem.,  II,  180,  and  C.  E.  Z.,  1,312  ;  cp.  152  23,  n. 

179  18.     Ecce  Homo.     See  John  xix.  5  (Vulgate). 

179  19.  Choice  of  Hercules.  Nam  quod  Herculem  Prodicium 
dicunt,  ut  est  apud  Xenophontem,  quum  primum  pubesceret,  quod 
tempus  a  natura  ad  deligendum,  quam  quisque  viam  vivendi  sit 
ingressurus  datum  est,  exisse  in  solitudinem  atque  ibi  sedentem  diu 
secum  multumque  dubitasse,  quum  duas  cerneret  vias,  unam  Volup- 
tatis,  alteram  Virtutis,  utram  ingredi  melius  esset,  hoc  Herculi  lovis 
satu  edito  potuit  fortasse  contingere,  —  Cicero,  De  Officiis,  I,  xxxii. 
"  O  Prodicus  !  Was  thy  '  Choice  of  Hercules  '  written  to  shame 
us  ;  that  after  twenty  centuries  of  '  perfectibility '  we  are  here  still 
arguing.''  "     L.W.C,  Wotton  Reinfred,  100  f. 

179  24.  Zinzendorfs.  Nikolaus,  Count  v.  Zinzendorf  (1700- 
1760),  was  prominent  in  the  sect  of  Moravians  or  United  Brethren  ; 
and  gave  them  a  refuge  on  his  estate,  Herrnhut. 

179  27.     "  work  in  well-doing."     See  166  20,  and  n. 

180  9.  Papin's  Digester.  Denis  Papin  (i 647-1:.  17 12)  in  1681 
presented  a  paper  to  the  Royal  Society  describing  his  invention  of 
a  "  digester  or  engine  for  softening  bones."  To  this  machine  was 
applied  for  the  first  time  the  principle  of  the  safety-valve  ;  the  title 
of  the  French  tract  describing  it  explains  C's  allusion  fully.  "  La 
maniere  d'amollir  les  os  et  de  faire  couire  toutes  sortes  de  viandes  en 
fort  peu  de  tems  et  a  peu  de  frais,  etc."  See  Dechanel,  Natural 
Philosophy,  II.  Heat,  p.  360.     Lond.,  1888.     Cp.  190  26. 

180  14.     Aaron's  Rod.     See  Exodus  vii.  10,  20  ;  viii.  6,  17. 
180  21.     The  Word.     See  John  i.  1-3. 
180  27.     to  spend.     See  2  Cor.  xii.  15. 

180  33.  seed-field  of  Opinion.  An  application  of  the  motto, 
"  Mein  Acker,  etc.''^     See  n.,  p.  275. 

181  7.     mustard-seed.     See  Matt.  xiii.  31,  32. 

181  32.  Solon's  and  Lycurgus's  Constitutions.  See  Lang- 
horne's  Plutarch,  I,  262-284  ;   135-152.     Lond.,  1809. 

181  33.  Justinian's  Pandects.  See  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall, 
VIII,  ch.  xliv.  pp.  33-11 1.  Lond.,  1807.  —  Code  Napoldon.  The 
total  alteration  of  the  laws  of  France  by  Napoleon  ;  based  on 
Justinian's  Institutions .  See  Scott,  Life  of  Napoleo7i  Buonaparte, 
VI,  44-66.     Edin.,  1827. 

182  13.  no  Property  in  our  very  Bodies.  "  I  have  no  property 
in  anything  whatsoever  ;  except  perhaps  (if  I  am  a  virtuous  man)  in 
my  own  free  will.     Of  my  body  I  have  only  a  life  rent ;  of  all  that  is 


362  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  I. 

without  my  skin  only  an  accidental  possession,  so  long  as  I  can  keep 
it."    Journal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  94. 

183  22.  Nose-of-Wax.  "  Laws  altered,  misconstrued,  interpreted 
pro  and  con,  as  the  Judge  is  made  by  his  friends,  bribed  or  otherwise 
affected  as  a  nose  of  wax,  good  to-day,  none  to-morrow."  Burton, 
Anatoffiy  of  MelancJioly,  Democritus  to  the  Reader. 

"  But  vows  with  you  being  like 
To  your  religion,  a  nose  of  wax 
To  be  turned  every  way." 

Massinger,  T/te  U7i7iat2iral  Combat,  v.  2. 

184  13.  pretences  of  interpretation.  For  Carlyle's  interpreta- 
tion, see  Essays,  Diderot,  III,  287. 

184  15.  selected.  By  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  himself.  See  6, 
5ff. 

184  17.  Serpent-of-Eternity.  "  I  have  made  an  important  im- 
provement in  the  Device  of  the  Seal.  Instead  of  a  plain  Ring  round 
the  Star,  we  will  have  a  Serpent-of-Eternity  (its  tail  in  its  mouth, 
universally  understood  as  the  emblem  of  Eternity),  and  on  the  body 
of  it  the  words  engraved.  It  can  be  made  larger  than  the  ring 
could  —  and  then  a  Star  travelling  through  Eternity,  Ohne  Hast, 
etc.;  this  seems  to  me  a  really  beautiful  emblem."     Lett.,  209. 

184  29.     not  what  he  did.     See  above,  1.  7. 

184  32.  The  imprisoned  Chrysalis.  Psyche  is  the  Greeks'  per- 
sonification of  the  soul,  and  her  emblem  is  the  butterfly. 

185  8.     Lover's  Leap.     See  141  29. 

185  11.     '  pools  and  plashes.'     See  141  32. 

185  26.     Hell-gate  Bridge.     See  Par.  Lost,  ii.  1024-1033. 

185  32.     Through  many. 

'T  is  pleasant  through  the  loopholes  of  retreat 
To  peep  at  such  a  world. 

CowpER,  Tlie  Task,  iv. 

186  7.     *  Living  Garment.'     See  48  22,  31. 

186  13.  *  diluted  madness.'  Carlyle  used  this  term  to  describe 
Lamb's  wit.     See  Rem.,  I,  94. 

186  23.     'Passivity.'     See  91  6. 

187  7.     Dream  Grottoes.     See  46  31,  n. 

188  1.  This  first  paragraph  is  the  key  to  the  whole  mystery  of 
Clothes  Philosophy,  such  as  it  is.  For  the  indirect  self-praise  of 
the  second  sentence,  cp.  25  30,  n. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  I.]        INCIDENT  IN  HISTORY.  363 

188  11.    all  earthly  principalities.     Eph.  i.  21,  adapted. 

188  18.     Adamite.     See  51  6,  n. 

],88  19.  Rousseau.  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  (17 12-1794).  The 
first  works  which  brought  him  into  notice  were  paradoxical  arraign- 
ments of  civilization,  in  which  he  exalts  '  la  nature '  and  '  I'etat  de 
nature ' ;  and  pleads  for  simplicity  of  life.  The  notion  that  he 
*  recommended  nudity '  is  based  on  such  assertions  as  *  L'homme 
de  bien  est  un  athlete  qui  se  plait  a  combattre  nu  '  {Disconrs  siir  les 
Sciences  et  les  Arts,  I,  4;  CEuvres  Completes,  Paris,  1884),  and  '  Ce 
n'est  pas  done  un  si  grand  malheur  a  ces  premiers  hommes;  ni  surtout 
un  si  grand  obstacle  a  leur  conservation,  que  la  nudite,  le  defaut 
d'habitation,  et  la  privation  de  toutes  ces  inutilites  que  nous  croyons 
si  necessaires '  {Discouj-s  siir  VOrigine  de  VInegalite  parmi  les 
Hommes,  I,  88;   CEuvres  Completes,  Paris,  1884). 

189  15.     old  figure.     See  185  26,  n. 

189  19.  Perfectibility.  Carlyle  is  apparently  thinking  not  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  perfection  but  the  tenet  of  the  optimistic 
philosophers.     Cp.  192,  25. 

189  21.  Diet  of  Worms.  "  This  City  of  Worms,  had  we  a  right 
imagination,  ought  to  be  as  venerable  to  us  Moderns,  as  any  Thebes 
or  Troy  was  to  the  Ancients.  Whether  founded  by  the  Gods  or 
not,  it  is  of  quite  unknown  antiquity,  and  has  witnessed  the  most 
wonderful  things.  Within  authentic  times,  the  Romans  were  here  ; 
and  if  tradition  may  be  credited,  Attila  also  ;  it  was  the  seat  of  the 
Austrasian  kings  ;  the  frequent  residence  of  Charlemagne  himself  ; 
innumerable  Festivals,  High-tides,  Tournaments  and  Imperial  Diets 
were  held  in  it,  of  which  latter,  one  at  least,  that  where  Luther 
appeared  in  1521,  will  be  forever  remembered  by  all  mankind." 
Essays,  The  Nibelungen  Lied,  II,  335,  n. 

189  22.  Peterloo.  The  name  given  to  a  riot  at  St.  Peter's  Field, 
Manchester,  Aug.  16,  18 19.  A  meeting  to  discuss  Parliamentary 
Reform  was  dispersed  by  the  military  ;  eleven  persons  were  killed 
and  600  wounded.     The  name  was  suggested  by  Waterloo. 

189  25.  George  Fox's  making.  The  founder  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  (1624-1691).     See  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.  and  190  19,  n. 

"  Ce  f ut  dans  le  temps  que  trois  ou  quatre  sectes  dechiraient  la 
Grande-Bretagne  par  des  guerres  civiles  entreprises  au  nom  de 
DiEU,  qu'un  nomme  George  Fox,  du  comte  de  Leicester,  fils  d'un 
ouvrier  en  sole,  s'avisa  de  precher  en  vrai  apotre  a  ce  qu'il  preten- 
dait ;  c'est-a-dire,  sans  savoir  ni  lire  ni  ecrire.  C'etait  un  jeune 
homme  de  vingt-cinq  ans,  de  moeurs  irreprochables,  et  saintement 


364  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  I. 

fou.  II  etait  vetu  de  cuir  depuis  les  pieds  jusqu'a  la  tete  ;  il  allait 
de  village  en  village,  criant  centre  la  guerre  et  centre  le  clerge." 
Voltaire,  I/istoire  dcs  Quakers. 

189  28.  Divine  Idea.  "  According  to  Fichte,  there  is  a  *  Divine 
Idea'  pervading  the  visible  Universe;  which  visible  Universe  is 
itself  but  its  symbol  and  sensible  manifestation,  having  in  itself  no 
meaning,  or  even  true  existence  independent  of  it.  To  the  mass  of 
men  this  Divine  Idea  of  the  world  lies  hidden ;  yet  to  discern  it,  to 
seize  it,  and  live  wholly  in  it,  is  the  condition  of  all  genuine  virtue, 
knowledge,  freedom  ;  and  the  end,  therefore,  of  all  spiritual  effort  in 
every  age.  Literary  Men  are  the  appointed  interpreters  of  this 
Divine  Idea ;  a  perpetual  priesthood,  we  might  say,  standing  forth, 
generation  after  generation,  as  the  dispensers  and  living  types  of 
God's  everlasting  wisdom,  to  show  it  in  their  writings  and  actions, 
in  such  particular  form  as  their  own  particular  times  require  it  in." 
Essays,  State  of  German  Literature,  I,  62  f.  For  a  humorous  turn  of 
the  phrase  cp.  247  18. 

190  8.     Thirdborough.     Constable. 

Dull.    I  myself  reprehend  his  own  person,  for  I  am  his  grace's  tharborough. 

Love's  Labour'' s  Lost,  i.  i. 
Host.    I  know  my  remedy,  I  must  go  fetch  the  thirdborough. 

Sly.    Third  or  fourth  or  fifth  borough,  I  '11  answer  him  by  law. 

Taming  of  the  Shretv,  Induction. 

190  19.  drink  beer.  Carlyle's  wonderful  memory  is  at  fault 
here,  and  he  hardly  does  the  Leicestershire  parsons  justice.  What 
one  clergyman  did  advise  Fox  to  do  was  to  "  take  tobacco  and  sing 
psalms,"  part  of  which  recommendation  is  distinctly  edifying  and 
part  might  have  induced  such  a  smoker  as  Carlyle  to  exercise  a 
little  charity  in  the  matter.  Poor  Fox  complains  that  he  did  not  like 
tobacco  and  could  not  sing.  Fox's  Journals,  I,  79.  This  counsel 
might  have  been  mistaken,  but  it  was  not  vicious.  The  error  may 
be  due  to  Carlyle's  confusing  this  with  another  incident.  Fox,  like 
Byron,  had  no  objection  to  a  pot  of  beer  ;  but  being  once  urged, 
while  having  such  refreshment,  by  a  "professor,"  to  assist  in  an 
orgy  of  health  drinking,  he  refused,  paid  his  shot  and  walked  off. 
Journals,  I,  76  f.  See  Watson's  Life  of  George  Fox,  p.  22.  Lond., 
i860.  Marsh,  A  Popular  Life  of  George  Fox,  p.  30.  Lond.,  1847. 
Fox's  Journals,  I,  79.     Lond.,  1827. 

190  20.     Blind  leaders.      See  Matt.  xv.  14. 
190  2G.     Patent  Digester.     See  ISO  9,  n. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  I.]         INCIDENT  IN  HISTORY.  365 

191  3.  Loretto-shrine.  Near  Ancona  in  Italy,  "  the  Christian 
Mecca."  The  shrine  is  said  to  be  the  house  in  Nazareth  in  which 
Mary  was  born  and  brought  up.     See  Swift,  Tale  of  a  Tub,  sec.  4. 

191  13.  hollow  of  a  tree  "  But  my  troubles  continued  and  I 
was  often  under  great  temptations  ;  and  I  fasted  much  and  walked 
abroad  in  solitary  places  many  days,  and  often  took  my  bible  and 
went  and  sat  in  hollow  trees  and  lonesome  places  till  night  came  on." 
Fox^s  Journals,  I,  82.     Lond.,  1827. 

191  15.  perennial  suit.  "  Now,  though  it  might  seem  not  very 
agreeable  with  the  gravity  of  my  work,  to  mention  what  kind  of 
clothes  he  wore  in  these  first  years  of  his  peregrination  ;  yet  I  do 
not  account  it  absurd  to  say  here,  that  it  is  true  what  a  certain 
author,  viz.,  Gerard  Croes,  relates  of  him,  that  he  was  clothed  with 
leather  ;  but  not  as  the  said  author  adds,  because  he  could  not,  nor 
would  not,  forget  his  former  leather  work  ;  but  it  was  partly  for  the 
simplicity  of  that  dress,  and  also  because  such  a  clothing  was  strong 
and  needed  but  little  mending  or  repairing."  Sewel,  Histoty  of  the 
Quakers,  I,  20.  Lond.,  181 1.  Cp.  Fox''s  Journals,  I,  146.  Lond., 
1827. 

191  24.  Angelo.  Michelangelo  Buonarotti  (147  5-1 564),  the 
sculptor  of  the  David  and  the  Moses,  and  decorator  of  the  Sistine 
chapel  ceiling.  —  Rosa,  Salvator  (161 5-1673),  Neapolitan  painter, 
noted  for  his  romantic  landscapes  and  battle-pieces.  The  bracket- 
ing of  these  names  in  this  connection  indicates  Carlyle's  ignorance 
of  art.     See  M.  D.  Conway,  T/w?nas  Carlyle,  p.  116.     N.  Y.,  1881. 

191  34.  Vanity  holds.  Carlyle  wishes  to  convey  the  idea  that 
the  world  from  which  Fox  escapes  is  at  once  frivolous,  laborious 
and  sordid.  To  do  this,  he  combines  in  one  phrase  the  notions 
represented  by  Vanity  Fair  of  Pilgrim's  F?'og7'ess,  the  English  work- 
house, and  the  squalid,  vicious  street  of  London  known  as  Ragfair. 

192  5.     for  the  Poor.     Matt.  xi.  5,  adapted. 

192  6.  D'Alembert.  Jean  le  Rond  (17 17-1783),  French  philoso- 
pher and  mathematician,  wrote  for  the  Dictionnaire  Encyclopcdiqjie, 
the  Discours  prelitninaire. 

192  7.  Diogenes  ...  the  greatest  man.  His  lack  of  decency 
is  fully  discussed  in  Bayle's  Dictionary.  For  his  sayings  see  Diog. 
Laert.,  Vit.  Philos.,  vi. 

192  16.  Cynic's  Tub.  "  Diogenes  .  .  .  dressed  himself  in  the 
garment  which  distinguished  the  Cynics  and  walked  about  the  streets 
with  a  tub  on  his  head,  which  served  him  as  a  house  and  a  place  of 
repose."     Leinpriere. 


366  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  II. 

192  22.  '  perennial  suit.'     See  191  i.-j,  n. 

192  25.  Perfectibility  of  Society.     Cp.  189  19,  n. 

192  28.  North  Cape.     See  163  2o  =  164  8. 

192  :}o.  more  meant. 

And  if  aught  else  great  bards  beside 
In  sage  and  solemn  tunes  have  sung, 
Of  tumeys  and  of  trophies  hung ; 
Of  forests  and  enchantments  drear, 
Where  more  is  meant  than  meets  the  ear. 

Milton,  II  Penseroso,  1 15-120. 

193  5.     Mammon-god.     See  191  33. 

193  6.     Vanity's  Workhouse.     See  191  34,  n. 

193  14.  Fancy-Bazaar.  The  Soho  bazar  in  London  dates  from 
1806  and  is  still  in  operation. 

193  15.  Day  and  Martin.  A  well-known  London  firm,  makers 
of  blacking  for  boots.     Cp.  Carlyle,  Frederick  the  Great,  I,  i. 

193  24.     Gibeonites.     See  Josh,  ix.  3-27. 

194  13.     life-giving  Word.     See  John  i.  3,  4,  14, 
194  16.    wonder  of  wonders.     Cp.  248  24,  n. 
194  17.     two  or  three.     See  Matt,  xviii.  20. 

194  20.     cloven  tongues.     See  Acts  ii.  3. 

194  28.  Novalis.  Pseudonym  of  Friedrich  von  Hardenberg 
(1772-1801),  a  German  mystic,  author  of  Heim-ich  von  Oftei'dingen. 
Hymnen  an  die  A\icht,  Blilthenstaiib.  See  Carlyle's  characteriza- 
tion, Essays,  II,  79-134. 

194  28.  It  is  certain.  "  Es  ist  gewiss,  dass  eine  Meinung  sehr 
viel  gevvinnt,  sobald  ich  weiss,  dass  irgend  jemand  davon  iiberzeugt 
ist,  sie  wahrhaft  annimmt."  Novalis  Schrifte7i,  II,  104.  Berlin, 
1826.     Quoted  also.  Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  15  ;  cp.  7  4. 

195  8.     virtue  goes  out.     Mark  v.  30,  adapted. 

195  27.  getrosten  Muthes.  A  form  of  expression  occurring  in 
Carlyle's  correspondence.     Cp.  Lett.,  54,  227,  235  ;   C.  E.  Z.,  II,  149. 

196  22.     hollow  shapes.     Cp.  214  10. 

196  27.  ghastly  affectation  of  Life.  Cp.  214  12.  "  Meanwhile 
it  is  singular  how  long  the  rotten  will  hold  together,  provided  you 
do  not  handle  it  roughly.  For  whole  generations  it  continues  stand- 
ing, '  with  a  ghastly  affectation  of  life,'  after  all  life  and  truth  has 
fled  out  of  it  ;  so  loth  are  men  to  quit  their  old  ways,  and  conquer- 
ing indolence  and  inertia,  venture  on  new."  French  Revolution,  The 
Bastille,  bk.  ii.  cap.  iii. 

196  29.     new  Vestures.     Cp.  215  3. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  III.  SYMBOLS.  367 

197  5.    Palingenesia.     See  29  3i  and  243  28. 

197  26.     Paper-bags.     See  69  3,  n. 

198  5.  Altars  might  still.  "  Well  might  the  Ancients  make 
Silence  a  god  ;  for  it  is  the  element  of  all  godhood,  infinitude  or 
transcendental  greatness  ;  at  once  the  source  and  the  ocean  where 
all  such  begins  and  ends."     Essays,  III,  21  ;  cp.  C.  E.  L.,  II,  235. 

198  10.  William  the  Silent.  "William  of  Orange  earned  the 
surname  of  '  the  Silent '  from  the  manner  in  which  he  received  these 
communications  of  Henry  without  revealing  to  the  monarch,  by 
word  or  look,  the  enormous  blunder  he  had  committed."  Motley, 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  pt.  ii.  ch.  i.  p.  233.     Lond.,  1889. 

198  18.  Speech  is  too  often.  "  La  parole  a  ete  donnee  a 
I'homme  pour  deguiser  sa  pensee,"  attributed  by  Barere  to  Talley- 
rand. Cp.  Buchmann,  Geflilgelte  Worte,  391,  17th  ed.,  for  fuller  dis- 
cussion. 

198  22.  Swiss  Inscription.  It  is  still  to  be  seen  carved  in  the 
wood-work  of  old  Swiss  houses. 

198  27.  Bees  will  not  work.  "  Beware  of  speaking.  Speech 
is  human,  silence  is  divine,  yet  also  brutish  and  dead  :  therefore  we 
must  learn  both  arts  ;  they  are  both  difficult.  Flower  roots  hidden 
under  soil.  Bees  working  in  darkness,  etc.  The  soul,  too,  in 
silence.  Let  not  thy  left  hand  know  what  thy  right  hand  doeth. 
Indeed  secrecy  is  the  element  of  all  goodness ;  every  virtue,  every 
beauty  is  mysterious."    Jourfial,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  93. 

198  29.     Let  not  thy  left  hand.     See  Matt.  vi.  3. 

198  33.  Like  other  plants.  "  Under  all  her  works,  chiefly  under 
her  noblest  work,  Life,  lies  a  basis  of  Darkness,  which  she  benignantly 
conceals  ;  in  Life,  too,  the  roots  and  inward  circulations  which 
stretch  down  fearfully  to  the  regions  of  Death  and  Night,  shall  not 
hint  of  their  existence,  and  only  the  fair  stem  with  its  leaves  and 
flowers,  shone  on  by  the  fair  sun,  shall  disclose  itself  and  joyfully 
grow."     Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  8. 

199  19.  Seal-Emblem.  This  was  written  before  the  invention 
of  envelopes,  in  the  age  of  wax  and  wafers.  Carlyle's  own  seal  was 
a  candle  with  the  motto,  Terar  dum  prosim.  In  183 1  some  English 
admirers  of  Goethe  presented  him  with  a  gold  seal.  The  device  was 
a  serpent  of  eternity  about  a  star,  and  the  motto  Ohiie  Hast  Abcr 
Ohfie  Rast.    See  G.-Corr.,  291-295  ;  and  184  17,  n. 

199  32.  the  Universe  .  .  .  one  vast  Symbol.  "  Is  not  all 
visible  nature,  all  sensible  existence  the  symbol  and  vesture  of  the 
Invisible  and  Infinite  }     Is  it  not  in  these  material  shows  of  things 


368  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  III. 

that  God,  virtue,  immortality  are  shadowed  forth  and  made  mani- 
fest to  man  ?  Material  nature  is  as  a  Fata-morgana,  hanging  in  the 
air,  a  cloud-picture,  but  painted  by  the  heavenly  light  ;  in  itself  it 
is  air  and  nothingness,  but  behind  it  is  the  glory  of  the  sun." 
L.  W.  C,  IVotton  Rciufrcd,  137. 

200  3.  "  Messias  of  Nature."  "Man  has  ever  expressed  some 
symbolical  Philosophy  of  his  Being  in  his  Works  and  Conduct ;  he 
announces  himself  and  his  Gospel  of  Nature ;  he  is  the  Messiah  of 
Nature."  Essays,  Novalis,  II,  118.  "  Man  is  heaven-bom  ;  not  the 
thrall  of  Circumstances,  of  Necessity,  but  the  victorious  subduer 
thereof ;  behold  how  he  can  become  the  *  Announcer  of  himself  and 
of  his  Freedom  ;  '  and  is  ever  what  the  Thinker  named  him,  *  the 
Messias  of  Nature!'"  Id.,  BosweWs  Life  of  Johnson,  III,  981.; 
see  Novalis  Schriftcn,  II,    169.     Berlin,  1837. 

200  13.  Motive-Millwrights.  Carlyle  was  opposed  to  the  Utili- 
tarian philosophy,  and  this  is  his  interpretation  or  travesty  of  it. 
See  Richard  Garnett,  Life  of  Thomas  Carlyle,  171.     Lond.,  1887. 

200  14.    Fantastic  tricks. 

Man,  proud  man  ! 
Drest  in  a  little  brief  authority, 
Most  ignorant  of  what  he  's  most  assured. 
His  glassy  essence  —  like  an  angry  ape. 
Plays  such  fantastic  tricks  before  high  heaven, 
As  make  the  angels  weep. 

Measttre  /or  Measure,  ii.  2. 

200  16.  heap  of  Glass.  "  Another  thinks  he  is  a  nightingale, 
and  therefore  sings  all  the  night  long  ;  another  he  is  all  glass,  a 
pitcher,  and  will  therefore  let  nobody  come  near  him,  and  such  a 
one  Laurentius  gives  out  upon  his  credit,  that  he  knew  in  France." 
Burton,  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  part  i,  sec.  3,  mem.  \,  subs.  3. 

200  18.  There  stands  he.  "  Buridan  (died  about  135S)  is  the 
creator  of  the  famous  ass,  which,  as  Bnrdiji's  ass,  was  current  in 
Burgundy,  perhaps  is,  as  a  vulgar  proverb.  .  .  .  The  story  told 
about  the  famous  paradox  is  very  curious.  The  Queen  of  France, 
Joanna  or  Jeanne,  was  in  the  habit  of  se%ving  her  lovers  up  in  sacks, 
and  throwing  them  into  the  Seine  ;  not  for  blabbing,  but  that  they 
might  not  blab  —  certainly  the  safer  plan.  Buridan  was  exempted, 
and,  in  gratitude,  invented  the  sophism.  .  .  .  The  argument  is  as 
follows,  and  is  seldom  told  in  full.  Buridan  was  for  free-will  —  that  is, 
will  which  determines  conduct,  let  motives  be  ever  so^  evenly  bal- 
anced. An  ass  is  equally  pressed  by  hunger  and  thirst ;  a  bundle  of 
hay  is  on  one  side,  a  pail   of  water  on   the  other.     Surely,  you  will 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  III.]  SYMBOLS.  369 

say,  he  will  not  be  ass  enough  to  die  for  want  of  food  and  drink  ;  he 
will  then  make  a  choice  —  that  is,  will  choose  between  alternatives 
of  equal  force.  The  problem  became  famous  in  the  schools  ;  some 
allowed  the  poor  donkey  to  die  of  indecision  ;  some  denied  the 
possibility  of  the  balance,  which  was  no  answer  at  all"  De  Morgan, 
Budget  of  Paradoxes,  p.  28.     Lond.,  1872. 

201  5.  Marseillese  Hymns.  "  Dusty  of  face,  with  frugal  refresh- 
ment, they  plod  onward ;  unweariable,  not  to  be  turned  aside. 
Such  march  will  become  famous.  The  Thought,  which  works 
voiceless  in  this  black-browed  mass,  an  inspired  Tyrtaean  Colonel, 
Rouget  de  Lille,  whom  the  earth  still  holds  (1836),  has  translated 
into  grim  melody  and  rhythm ;  into  his  Hymn  or  March  of 
the  Marseillese:  luckiest  musical-publication  ever  promulgated." 
French  Revolution,  The  Constitution,  bk.  vi. ;  The  Marseilles,  cap.  ii. 
For  use  of  plurals  cp.  2  l,  n.  Against  the  Utilitarian  theory  of 
motives,  Carlyle  exalts  the  part  played  by  the  emotions  in  human 
affairs.  For  the  view  which  Carlyle  opposes  see  Godwin,  Thoughts 
on  Man,  p.  240.     Lond.,  1831. 

201  8.     medicating  virtue.     Vis  medicatrix  naturae. 

201  12.     King  .  .  .  Priest  .  .  .  Prophet.     See  80  25,  n. 

201  29.  Kaiser  Joseph.  The  Second  of  Austria  (1741-1790), 
son  of  Francis  I.  and  Maria  Theresa.  He  is  remembered  as  a  high- 
minded  but  injudicious  reformer.  His  refusal  to  be  crowned  king  of 
Hungary  was  one  of  his  great  blunders.  The  iron  crown  was  worn 
only  once  by  the  Hungarian  monarchs,  on  the  day  of  their  corona- 
tion. It  was  removed  from  Presburg  to  Vienna  by  his  orders  in 
1784,  and  sent  back  to  the  cathedral  at  Budain  1790,  after  his  death. 

201  33.     lives,  works.     See  2  26,  n. 

202  9.  Bauernkrieg.  One  phase  of  the  Reformation  in  Geripany 
in  the  years  1524-25.  '$,Q(iT>''A\xhign6,  nisto7y  of  the  Reformation, 
bk.  ix.  chs.  X,  xi. 

202  10.  Netherland  Gueux.  See  Motley,  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Re- 
public, I,  p.  515  f.  and  p.  520  (N.  Y.,  3  vols.,  1856),  for  a  most 
spirited  account  of  how  the  name  originated. 

202  12.     King  Philip.     Philip  the  Second  of  Spain. 

202  20.    Costumes  and  Customs.     See  30  12,  n. 

202  27.     The  Cross.     Cp.  203  26  ff. 

203  20.    present  God.     Cp. 

A  present  deity  they  shout  around, 

A  present  deity  the  vaulted  roofs  rebound. 

Dkyden,  Alcxaiider's  Feast,  35  f. 
and  Acts  xii.  21-23. 


370  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  IV. 

204  3.     wax  old.     See  Ps.  cii.  26. 

204  10.  Runic  Thor.  '  Runick  '  was  used  loosely  to  mean  Norse, 
Scandinavian,  etc.  Thor  is  the  war-god  Thunder,  representing  the 
destructive  forces  in  Nature.  For  his  deeds  see  the  Elder  Edda, 
^prymskvi^a,  etc. 

204  11.  Mumbo-Jumbo.  "On  the  7th  of  December,  1795,  I 
departed  from  Konjour,  and  slept  in  a  village  called  Malla  (or  Mal- 
laing);  and  the  8th,  about  noon,  I  arrived  at  Kalor,  a  considerable 
town,  near  the  entrance  of  which  I  observed,  hanging  upon  a  tree,  a 
sort  of  masquerade  habit,  made  of  the  bark  of  trees,  which  I  was 
told  on  enquiry  belonged  to  Mumbo-Jumbo.  This  is  a  strange  bug- 
bear common  in  the  Mandingo  towns,  and  much  employed  by  the 
pagan  natives  in  keeping  their  women  in  subjection."  Mungo  Park, 
Travels,  p.  43.     N.  Y.,  1813. 

204  12.  Pawaw.  Eraser  and  the  editio  princeps  have  '  Wau- 
Wau.'  Wah-wah,  or  wow-wow,  is  the  name  of  an  Indian  ape.  Pow- 
wow is  priest,  conjurer,  medicine-man. 

204  17.    Ancient  Pistol  thought. 

Fortune  is  Bardolph's  foe  and  frowns  on  him  ; 
For  he  has  stol'n  a  pix,  and  hanged  must  a'  be. 

For  pix  of  Httle  price. 

Henry  V.,  iii.  6. 

204  26.     Pontiff.     See  70  30,  n. 

204  28.     Prometheus-like.     See  147  22,  n. 

205  2.  **  Champion  of  England."  To  the  family  of  Dymocke 
belongs  the  office  of  hereditary  champion.  He  appears  at  the  cere- 
mony in  full  armor.  The  reference  is  to  the  coronation  of  George 
IV.,  July  19,  1821,  but  a  search  in  contemporary  prints  has  failed  to 
unearth  any  allusion  to  difficulty  in  mounting. 

205  8.     Ragfair.     See  191  34,  n. 

205  14.  Repression  of  Population.  This  pamphlet  is  simply  a 
peg  for  Carlyle  to  hang  his  views  of  Malthusianism  upon. 

205  24.  Malthus.  T.  R.  Malthus  (1766-1S34)  advocated  the 
theory  that  while  population  increases  in  geometrical  proportion,  the 
means  of  subsistence  increases  only  in  arithmetical  proportion. 
One  remedy  for  poverty  lies  in  parents'  limiting  by  self-restraint  the 
number  of  their  children.  His  theory  is  more  often  denounced  and 
misrepresented  than  disproved.     Cp.  21  27,  n. 

205  2.5.     his  zeal.     See  Ps.  Ixix.  9. 

206  1.     diluted  forms  of  Madness.     See  186  13,  n. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  IV.]  HELOTAGE.  3^1 

206  14.  Zahdarm  .  .  .  Futteral.  See  bk.  ii.  caps.  iv.  (p.  115) 
and  i.  ii. 

207  6.     bread  of  Life.     See  John  vi.  35. 

207  15.  Guidance,  Freedom,  Immortality.  This  passage  is 
apparently  based  on  this  axiom  of  Novalis  quoted,  Essays,  II,  118. 
"  Philosophy  can  bake  no  bread ;  but  she  can  procure  for  us  God, 
Freedom,  Immortality.  Which  then  is  more  practical,  Philosophy 
or  Economy  ?  "     See  Novalis  Schriften,  II,  124.     Berlin,  1837. 

207  17.  chaff  and  dust.  An  adaptation  of  two  passages,  Ps. 
i.  4  and  John  iii.  8. 

207  26.     light  shining.     See  John  i.  5. 

207  33.     heavy-laden.     See  Matt.  xi.  28. 

207  34.  smoky  cribs.  "  Why  rather,  sleep,  ly'st  thou  in  smoky 
cribs — "     Hemy  IV.,  b.  iii.  i. 

208  9.     Breath  of  God.     See  Gen.  ii.  7. 

208  18.  The  old  Spartans.  "  As  often  as  the  slave  population 
appeared  to  be  growing  strong  and  it  was  thought  expedient  to 
weaken  and  terrify  them,  murderous  raids  were  made  against  them 
to  keep  down  their  number  and  their  spirit.  Thucydides,  an 
author  of  reputation,  unsurpassed  for  grave  veracity  and  caution, 
tells  a  tale  of  what  happened  in  his  own  day,  soon  after  the  death  of 
Pericles."     Langhorne's  Plutarch,  p.  226.     Cp.  id.,  crypteia. 

208  29.  Have  them  salted.  The  idea  is  Swift's  and  may  be 
found  elaborated  with  the  coolest  cynicism  in  his  tract,  **  A  Modest 
Proposal  for  Preventing  the  Children  of  Poor  People  in  Ireland 
from  Being  a  Burden  to  their  Parents  or  Country,  and  for  making 
them  Beneficial  to  the  Public."     1729. 

209  14.  too  crowded  indeed.  "  Must  the  indomitable  millions, 
full  of  old  Saxon  energy  and  fire,  lie  cooped  up  in  this  Western 
Nook,  choking  one  another,  as  in  a  Blackhole  of  Calcutta,  while  a 
whole  fertile  untenanted  Earth,  desolate  for  want  of  the  plough- 
share, cries  :  Come  and  till  me,  come  and  reap  me  .''  If  the  ancient 
Captains  can  no  longer  yield  guidance,  new  must  be  sought  after." 
Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  44.  This  is  the  usual  argument  and 
merely  puts  off  the  evil  day. 

209  21.  the  Curragh.  A  district  in  the  centre  of  county  Kil- 
dare,  Ireland,  famous  as  a  hunting  ground. 

209  24.  Hengsts.  See  18  1,  n. — Alarics.  See  Gibbon,  Decline 
and  Fall,  III,  265-452.     Lond.,  1866. 

209  26.     Fire-pillars.     See  Exodus  xiii.  21. 

209  27.    living  Valour. 


372  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  V. 

When  this  fiery  mass 
Of  living  valour  rolling  on  the  foe 
And  burning  with  high  hope. — 

Byron,  Childe  Harold,  iii.  27. 

209  JO.    Preserving  their  Game.     See  84  15,  n. 

210  11.    Pericardial  Nervous  Tissue.     See  196  5. 

210  25.     calls  it  Peace.     For  similar  thought  compare, 

Why  do  they  prate  of  the  blessings  of  Peace  ?  we  have  made  them  a  curse  ; 

Pickpockets,  each  hand  lusting  for  all  that  is  not  its  own  ; 

And  lust  of  gain,  in  the  spirit  of  Cain,  is  it  better  or  worse 

Than  the  heart  of  the  citizen  hissing  in  war  on  his  own  hearthstone  ? 

But  these  are  the  days  of  advance,  the  works  of  the  men  of  mind 
When  who  but  a  fool  would  have  faith  in  a  tradesman's  ware  or  his  word  ? 
Is  it  peace  or  war?    Civil  war,  as  I  think,  and  that  of  a  kind 
The  viler,  as  underhand,  not  openly  bearing  the  sword. 

Tennyson,  Maud,  i.  6,  7. 

211  4.  Laissez-faire.  "What  is  this  universal  cry  iox  Laissez- 
faire  ?  Does  it  mean  that  human  affairs  require  no  guidance  ;  that, 
wisdom  and  forethought  cannot  guide  them  better  than  folly  and 
accident  .■*  Alas,  does  it  not  mean  :  Such  guidance  is  worse  than 
none !  Leave  us  alone  of  your  guidance ;  eat  your  wages,  and 
sleep  !  And  now  if  guidance  have  grown  indispensable,  and  the 
sleep  continue,  what  becomes  of  the  sleep  and  its  wages  ?  "  Carlyle, 
Chartism,  cap.  vi. 

211  20.  'observant  eyes.'     See  above,  1.  7. 

211  23.  Wahngasse.     See  16  24,  n. 

212  3.  as  Rousseau  prayed.     See  188  19,  n. 

213  9.  Water  of  Life.     See  Rev.  xxii.  17. 

213  13.     'Armament  of  Mechanisers.'     See  212  I8,  23. 

213  21.  divested.  One  of  Carlyle's  recondite  puns.  Reference 
to  the  common  phrase,  '  vested  interests,'  and  play  on  the  literal 
meaning  of  the  word. 

213  23.  Irish  watchcoat.  Carlyle,  as  an  admirer  of  Sterne,  may 
refer  to  his  tale,  "  The  History  of  a  Watchcoat,"  which  "  was  pur- 
chased and  given  ...  by  the  lord  of  the  manor,  to  this  parish-church, 
to  the  sole  use  and  behoof  of  the  poor  sextons  thereof,  and  their  suc- 
cessors for  ever,  to  be  worn  by  them  respectively  in  winterly  cold 
nights,  in  ringing  complines,  passing  bells,  etc.''''  Works  of  Laurence 
Sterne,  II,  p.  625.  Lond.,  1885.  "Patched  all  over  like  an  Irish- 
man's coat."     Kingsley,  Water-Babies,  p.  89.     Lond.,  1891. 

213  25.  Job's-news.  German  {Hiobspost),  not  English,  for  tidings 
of  disaster.     See  Job  i.  13-19. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  v.]  THE   PHCENIX.  373 

213  27.    into  the  wheel-spokes. 

"  You  purpose,  single 
In  all  Europe,  alone,  to  fling  yourself 
Against  the  wheel  of  Destiny  that  rolls 
For  ever  its  appointed  course  ;  to  clutch 
Its  spokes  with  mortal  arm  ?  " 

Schiller,  Don  Carlos,  iii.  10. 

Translated  by  Carlyle,  Life  of  Schiller,  64  f.     Lond.,  1874. 

214  1.     'Inevitable  and  Inexorable.'     See  213  30. 
214  2.     diabolico-angelical  Indifference.     See  28  1. 

214  4.  huge  Ragfair.  See  191  34,  n.  —  rags  and  tatters.  See 
205  7. 

214  7.     'unhunted  Helots.'     See  208  19  ff,  and  208  I8,  n. 

214  8.  sic  vos  non  vobis.  "  Thus  do  ye  but  not  for  yourselves." 
Part  of  lines  attributed  to  Virgil.     Donatus,  Life  of  Virgil,  17. 

Sic  vos  non  vobis  nidificatis  aves, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  vellera  fertis  oves, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  mellificatis  apes, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  fertis  aratra  boves. 

"  The  rule,  Sic  vos  non  vobis,  never  altogether  to  be  got  rid  of  in 
men's  Industry,  now  presses  with  such  incubus  weight  that  Industry 
must  shake  it  off,  or  utterly  be  strangled  under  it."  Essays,  Charac- 
teristics, III,  25. 

214  10.     *  empty  Masks.'     See  196  22  ff. 

214  15.     *  Pinnacle  of  Weissnichtwo.'     See  16  25,  n. 

214  25.    mortal  coil. 

"  When  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil." 

Hamlet,  iii.  i,  66. 

214  29.     two  or  three.     See  194  17  n. 

215  3.     Religion.     See  196  28  f. 

215  6.  aphorism  of  Saint  Simon's.  For  his  philosophy,  see 
Doctrine  de  Saint-Si77ion,  Exposition,  Prejniere  Annee,  1828-1829, 
3d  ed.  Paris,  1831  ;  (Euvres  Choisies  de  C.  H.  de  Saint-Sitnon  pre- 
cedees  d^un  Essai  sur  sa  Doctrine.  3  vols.  Paris,  1839  ;  and  Quarterly 
Review,  1831,  pp.  407-450. 

215  12.  the  Phoenix.  "  That  there  is  but  one  phoenix  in  the 
world,  which  after  many  hundred  years  burneth  itself  and  from  the 
ashes  thereof  ariseth  up  another,  is  a  conceit  not  new  or  altogether 
popular,  but  of  great  antiquity ;  not  only  delivered  by  human 
authors  but  frequently  expressed  also  by  holy  writers.  .  .  .  The 
Scripture  also  seems  to  favour  it,  particularly  that  of  Job  xxi.     In 


374  ^'^ TES.  [Rk.  Ill,  Cap.  VI. 

the  interpretation  of  Reda,  Dicebatn,  in  tiidiilo  inco  moriar,  ct  sicut 
phoenix  vuiltiplicabo  dies ;  and  Psalm  xxxi.  diKatos  ojanep  (poTvi^ 
6.vdr}<rei,  vir  Jitstus  tit  phoenix  florebit,  as  Tertullian  renders  it, 
and  so  also  expounds  it  in  his  book  before  alleged 

"  As  for  longevity,  that  it  liveth  a  thousand  years  or  more  ;  besides 
that  from  imperfect  observations  and  rarity  of  appearance,  no  con- 
firmation can  be  made,  there  may  be  probably  a  mistake  in  the  com- 
pute." Browne,  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,  bk.  iii.  cap.  xii.  Cp.  Dekker, 
Foicre  Birdes  of  Noah''s  Ark,  N'on-Dramatic  Woi-ks,  V,  88  f.  Huth 
Library. 

215  17.  incautious  beards.  "  Le  satyre,  dit  une  ancienne  fable, 
voulut  baiser  et  embrasser  le  feu,  la  premiere  fois  qu'il  le  vit  ;  mais 
Prometheus  lui  cria  :  '  Satyre,  tu  pleureras  la  barbe  de  ton  menton, 
car  il  brule  quand  on  y  touche.'  "  Rousseau,  Discoiirs  siir  les  Sciences 
et  les  Arts,  ii.  n. 

215  27.    Phoenix  Death-Birth.     See  215  12,  n. 

216  7.    more  in  sorrow. 

A  countenance  more 
In  sorrow  than  in  anger. 

Havdet,  i.  2. 

216  8.  Doctor  utriusque  Juris.  Doctor  of  both  Laws,  LL.D. 
See  5  22,  n. 

216  12.     gukguk.     See  12  6,  n. 

216  22.  rosy-fingered.  poSoSct/cruXos,  Homeric  epithet  for  the 
Dawn. 

216  24.  gold-vapour.  Because  the  alchemist  sought  for  a  sub- 
stance called  the  Philosopher's  Stone  that  would  turn  base  metals 
into  gold. 

216  27.  Shall  Courtesy  be  done.  "  Why  should  politeness  be 
peculiar  to  the  rich  and  well-born  ?  Is  not  every  man  alive,  and  is 
not  every  man  venerable  to  every  other  ?  '  There  is  but  one  temple 
in  the  universe,'  says  Novahs,  '  and  that  is  the  body  of  man.'  " 
C.-/our.,  Sept.  7,  1830  ;  cp.  C.  E.  L.,  II,  88. 

217  15.  There  is  but  one  Temple.  "Es  giebt  nur  Einen  Tern- 
pel  in  der  Welt,  und  das  ist  der  menschUche  Korper.  Nichts  ist 
heiliger  als  diese  hohe  Gestalt.  Das  Blicken  vor  Menschen  ist  erne 
Huldigung  dieser  Offenbarung  im  Fleisch.  Man  beriihrt  den  Him- 
mel,  wenn  man  einen  Menschenleib  betastet."  iVovalis  Schriften, 
II,  126.  Berlin,  1826.  "  Friend  Novalis,  the  devoutest  heart  I 
knew,  and  of  purest  depth,  has  not  scrupled  to  call  man  what  the 
Divine  Man  is  called  in   Scripture,  a  '  Revelation  in  the   Flesh.'  " 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VI.]  OLD    CLOTHES.  ^y^ 

Essays,  Goethe's  Works,  III,  i6i  ;  cp.  Essays,  Novalis,  II,  Ii8.     The 
idea  is  Biblical ;  see  i  Cor.  iii.  i6,  17. 

217  22.  Johnson  only  bowed.  I  find  that  on  one  occasion 
Johnson's  bow  to  an  archbishop  made  a  great  impression  (see 
Autobiography  of  Mrs.  Piozzi,  I,  21  f.,  Lond.,  1861,  and  Eoswell, 
sub  atin.,  1781),  but  no  notice  of  such  a  habit  as  here  mentioned. 
See,  however.  The  Virginians,  I,  xxvi.  p.  247  f.     Lond.,  1S69. 

217  33.  reverence  to  those  Shells.  The  idea  is  Richter's,  ampli- 
fied. "  For  him  a  garment  was  a  sort  of  hollow  half-man,  to  whom 
only  the  nobler  parts  and  first  principles  were  wanting  :  he  honoured 
the  wrappages  and  hulls  of  our  interior,  not  as  an  Elegant  or  a 
Critic  of  Beauty,  but  because  it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  despise 
aught  which  he  saw  others  honouring."  Qidtitiis  Fixlein,  C. -Trans., 
II,  104. 

218  5.     straddling  animal.     See  50  26,  n. 

218  16.  Pagoda  is  not  less  sacred.  "  Fixlein  .  .  .  courteously 
took  off  his  hat  before  the  empty  windows  of  the  Castle ;  houses  of 
quality  were  to  him  like  persons  of  quality,  as  in  India  the  Pagoda 
at  once  represents  the  temple  and  the  god."  C-Trans.,  Qitititus 
Fixlein,  II,  108. 

218  21.     Toomtabard.     See  below,  1.  23,  and  C.  E.  L.,  II,  89. 

219  6.  monstrous  tuberosity.  "  It  is  hke  the  heart  of  all  the 
universe,  and  the  flood  of  human  effort  rolls  out  of  it  and  into  it 
with  a  violence  that  almost  appals  one's  very  sense.  O  that  our 
father  saw  Holborn  in  a  fog !  with  the  black  vapour  brooding  over 
it  absolutely  like  fluid  ink  ;  and  coaches  and  wains  and  sheep  and 
oxen  and  wild  people  rushing  on  with  bellowings  and  shrieks  and 
thundering  din  as  if  the  earth  in  general  were  gone  distracted  !  Then 
there  are  stately  streets  and  squares  and  calm  green  recesses,  into 
which  nothing  of  this  abomination  is  permitted  to  enter.  No  won- 
der Cobbett  calls  the  place  a  Wen.  It  is  a  monstrous  Wen."  Letter 
of  Carlyle,  quoted  by  Gamett,  Life,  p.  t,j.  Lond.,  1887.  Cp. 
E.  Lett,  311  f. 

219  9.  Spartan  broth,  ^uiiibs  fi^as.  See  Langhorne's  Plutarch, 
p.  35.     N.  Y.,  1864. 

219  12.  Monmouth  Street.  "Noted  throughout  the  entire 
XVIII  century  for  the  sale  of  second-hand  clothes,  and  several  of 
the  shops  continue  to  be  occupied  by  Jew  dealers  in  left-off  apparel." 
Lojtdon,  Past  and  Present,  II,  554. 

Thames  street  gives  cheeses,  Covent  Garden,  fruits, 
Moorfield,  old  books,  and  Monmouth  street,  old  suits. 


376  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VI. 

219  13.     Sanhedrim.     The  Jewish  national  council. 

219  17.     the  Prison.     "  The  Prison  called  Life."     Eraser. 

—  he  cast  him  forth, 
And  sliut  him  in  a  prison  called  Life. 

From  Werner's  drama,  The  Te?nplars  of  Cyprus,  quoted  by  Carlyle, 
Essays,  I,  115. 

219  21.    Angel  of  Doom.     See  Rev.  xi.  15,  18. 

219  22.  like  the  Pope.  "  Tiara.  A  cylindrical  head-dress 
pointed  at  the  top  and  surrounded  with  three  crowns,  which  the 
Pope  wears  as  a  symbol  of  sovereignty."  Catholic  Dictionary.  For 
the  three  hats,  see  RoiDidabout  Papers,  "  Autour  de  mon  chapeau," 
the  initial.  "  I  have  seen  him  (says  my  author)  take  three  old  high- 
crowned  hats,  and  clap  them  all  on  his  head  three  story  high." 
Tale  of  a  Tub,  sect.  iv. 

"  Perhaps  many  of  Carlyle's  readers  may  never  have  seen  the 
innumerable  grey-bearded  Jews  .  .  .  who  once  perambulated  the 
streets  of  London,  with  their  unceasing  '  Ou'  Clo' '  ;  and  with  per- 
haps a  couple  of  black  calico  bags  thrown  over  their  shoulders,  con- 
taining old  clothes  of  every  kind  ;  and  with  two  or  three  hats  slung 
or  stuck  anywhere  about  them  for  convenience  of  carriage.  Hats 
were  made  of  beaver-skin  in  those  days,  and  were  specially  prized  by 
that  symbolic  fraternity,  now  to  be  seen  and  heard  no  more.  Field 
Lane,  also,  with  its  long  fluttering  rows  of  silk  handkerchiefs  (the 
prizes  of  successful  pocket-picking),  where  victims  sometimes  pur- 
chased, on  cheap  terms,  handkerchiefs  they  had  lost  over  night,  — 
Held  Lane  also  has  been  swept  from  existence  by  the  new  times  ; 
but  both  it,  and  what  were  called  the  '  Ou'  Clo'  men,'  were  once 
familiar  enough  to  the  inhabitants  of  London."  Larkin,  Carlyle 
and  the  Open  Secret  of  His  Life,  48.     Lond.,  18S6. 

219  28.     purify.     See  etymology  of  Purgatory. 

220  1.    Field  Lane.     See  219  22,  n. 

220  2.  Dionysius'  Ear.  Greek  tyrant  of  Syracuse,  a.u.c.  364- 
367.  "  He  made  a  subterraneous  cave  in  a  rock,  still  extant,  in  the 
form  of  a  human  ear,  which  measured  80  feet  in  height  and  250  in 
length.  It  was  called  the  ear  of  Dionysius.  The  sounds  of  this 
subterraneous  cave  were  all  naturally  directed  to  one  common  tympa- 
num which  had  a  communication  with  an  adjoining  room  where 
Dionysius  spent  the  greatest  part  of  his  time  to  hear  whatever  was 
said  by  those  whom  his  suspicion  and  cruelty  had  confined  in  the 
apartments  above."     Lempriere. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VII.]         ORGANIC  FILAMENTS.  377 

220  7.     Mirza's  Hill.     See  The  Spectator,  No.  159. 

220  10.  beast-godhood.  "  What  indeed  is  man's  life  generally 
but  a  kind  of  beast-godhood ;  the  god  in  us  triumphing  more  and 
more  over  the  beast ;  striving  more  and  more  to  subdue  it  under  his 
feet .''  "     Essays,  BosiuelVs  Johnson,  III,  84. 

220  14.     '  Devotion.'     See  219  31. 

220  16.     money-changers.     See  Matt.  xxi.  12. 

220  24.    fine  frenzy. 

The  poet's  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling, 

Doth  glance  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven. 

Midsutmner  Nighfs  Dream,  v.  i. 

220  24.     'pacing  and  repacing.'     See  219  32. 

220  25.  Delphic  avenue.  Carlyle  is  apparently  thinking  of 
Dodona.  **  This  Eaiist  is  a  mystic  Oracle  for  the  mind  ;  a  Dodona 
grove,  where  the  oaks  and  fountains  prophesy  to  us  of  our  destiny, 
and  murmur  unearthly  secrets."     Essays,  Goethe's  Helena,  I,  168. 

220  26.  Whispering-gallery.  There  is  such  a  gallery  in  St. 
Paul's,  London.     Cp.  220  2,  n.  * 

220  27.     '  Ghosts  of  Life.'     See  219  27. 

220  29.     the  grass  grow.     German  proverb,  rather  satirical. 

Man  riihmet,  Ihr  waret  der  pfissigste  Mann, 
Ihr  hortet  das  Graschen  fast  wachsen,  sagt  man. 

BiiRGER,  Der  Kaiser  iifid der  Abt. 

221  10.     '  ink-sea.'     See  219  8  and  219  6,  n. 

221  12.     Egg  of  Eros. 

First  of  all  was  Chaos,  one  confused  heap  : 

Darkness  envvrapt  the  disagreeing  deep  ; 

In  a  mixt  crowd  the  jumbling  elements  were, 

Nor  earth,  nor  air,  nor  heaven  did  appear  ; 

Till  on  the  horrid  vast  abyss  of  things, 

Teeming  night  spreading  o'er  her  coal  black  wings, 

Laid  the  first  egg  ;  whence,  after  time's  due  course, 

Issued  forth  Love  (the  world's  prolific  source") 

Glistening  with  golden  wings  ;  which  fluttering  o'er 

Dark  Chaos,  gendered  all  the  numerous  store 

Of  animals  and  gods, 

Aristophanes,    Birds,    694   ff. ;    quoted    by    Cudvvorth,    Intellectual 
System,  I,  174.     Lond.,  1845.     ^P-  ^^••>  4°i- 

222  8.     two  centuries.     See  221  17. 

222  13.  Thy  very  Hatred.  "  If  the  doing  of  right  depends  on 
the  receiving  of  it ;  if  our  fellow-men,  in  this  world,  are  not  persons, 
but  mere  things,  that  for  services  bestowed  will   return   services,  — 


378  NOTES.  [Hk.  Ill,  Cap.  VII. 

steam-engines  that  will  manufacture  calico,  if  we  put  in  coal  and 
water,  —  then  doubtless,  the  calico  ceasing,  our  coals  and  water  may 
also  rationally  cease  ;  the  questioner  threatening  to  injure  us  for  the 
truth,  we  may  rationally  tell  him  lies.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
our  fellow-man  is  no  steam-engine,  but  a  man  ;  united  with  us,  and 
with  all  men,  and  with  the  Maker  of  all  men,  in  sacred,  mysterious, 
indissoluble  bands,  in  an  All-embracing  Love,  that  encircles  alike  the 
seraph  and  the  glow-worm,  then  will  our  duties  to  him  rest  quite  on 
another  basis  than  this  very  humble  one  of  quid  pro  quay  Essays, 
Voltaire,  II,  33.  "  Hatred  itself  is  but  an  inverse  love.  The 
philosopher's  wife  complained  to  the  philosopher  that  certain  two- 
legged  animals  without  feathers  spake  evil  of  him,  spitefully  criticised 
his  goings  out  and  comings  in  ;  wherein  she,  too,  failed  not  of  her 
share  :  '  Light  of  my  life,'  answered  the  philosopher,  '  it  is  their  love 
of  us,  unknown  to  themselves,  and  taking  a  "foolish  shape;  thank 
them  for  it,  and  do  thou  love  them  more  wisely.  Were  we  mere 
steam-engines  working  here  under  this  roof-tree,  they  would  scorn  to 
speak  of  us  once  in  a  twelvemonth.'  "  Essays,  Goethe's  Works,  III, 
160. 

222  25.  largest  imaginable  Glass-bell.  A  hint  of  Goethe's 
expanded.  "  I  at  once  perceived  it  to  be  only  as  a  glass  bell, 
which  shut  me  up  in  the  exhausted  airless  space :  One  bold  stroke 
to  break  the  bell  in  pieces  and  thou  art  delivered  !  "  Carlyle,  Meister''s 
Apprenticeship,  I,  305.  Lond.,  1868.  "  If  Mechanism,  like  some 
glass  bell,  encircles  and  imprisons  us  ;  if  a  soul  looks  forth  on  a  fair 
heavenly  country  which  it  cannot  reach,  and  pines,  and  in  its  scanty 
atmosphere  is  ready  to  perish,  —  yet  the  bell  is  but  of  glass;  'one 
bold  stroke  to  break  the  bell  in  pieces  and  thou  art  delivered.'  " 
Essays,  Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  160. 

223  11.  hunting  by  Lake  Winnipic.  This  is  Carlyle's  con- 
temptuous way  of  referring  to  the  various  quarrels  of  the  rival 
fur-trading  companies  in  north-west  America ;  which  probably 
affected  the  peltry  market,  though  I  have  been  unable  to  find  any 
direct  evidence  to  support  the  statement.  See  Washington  Irving, 
Astoria,  and  Martin,  Castorologia,  cap.  x.     Montreal,  1892. 

223  14.     mathematical  fact.     See  Newton,  Principia,  Lex.  Ill, 
Cor  oil.  IV. 
223  26.     Cadmus.     See  Herod.  V,  58,  59  and  notes  (Rawlinson). 
You  have  the  letters  Cadmus  gave  — 
Think  ye,  he  meant  them  for  a  slave  ? 

Byron,  The  Isles  of  Greece. 

—  Faust  of  Mentz.     See  34  26,  n. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VII.]  ORGANIC   FILAMENTS.  379 

223  28.  MoesogOthic  Ulfila.  Or  Wulfila,  the  missionary  to  the 
Gothic  tribes  settled  in  Moesia,  on  the  Danube  ;  the  translator  of 
the  Bible  into  Gothic.  The  statement  is  incorrect,  and  rests  on 
erroneous  philology.  At  this  time  Gothic  was  supposed  to  be  the 
language  from  which  the  other  Teutonic  dialects  were  derived. 

223  30.     Tubalcain.     See  151  1,  n. 

224  12.     cloud  of  witnesses.     See  Heb.  xii.  i. 

224  13.  Communion  of  Saints.  The  idea  is  Goethean  "  The  third 
in  fine,  teaches  an  inspired  Communion  of  Saints,  that  is,  of  men  in 
the  highest  degree  good  and  wise."    Carlyle,  Meister^s  Travels^  cap.  x. 

224  25.     Newton.     For  Carlyle's  study  of  Newton,  E.  Lett.,  31, 

35^  51- 

11^^^.     Kepler,      '^^o.^x^^stox,  Martyrs  of  Sciaue.     Lond.,  1841. 

224  33.  Pope's  Bull.  On  Dec.  10,  1520,  Luther  burnt  publicly 
at  the  eastern  gate  of  Wittenberg  the  bull  by  which  he  was  excom- 
municated. It  was  common  to  sentence  obnoxious  works  to  be 
burnt  by  the  hangman.  See  D'Aubigne,  bk.  vi.  ch.  x.,  and  Heroes 
and  Hero- War  ship,  133.     Lond.,  1874. 

225  8.     spheral  swan-Song.     See  Teimyson,  The  Dying  Swan. 

There  's  not  the  smallest  orb  which  thou  beholdest 
But  in  liis  motion  like  an  angel  sings. 

MercJtant  of  Venice,  v.  i. 

225  15.  Remark,  not  without  surprise.  "Earl  (Jarl-Yirl), 
Count,  Duke,  Knight,  etc.,  are  all  titles  derived  from  fighting  ;  the 
honour-titles  of  a  future  time  will  derive  themselves  from  knowing 
and  weW-doijig:'     C.-Jour.,  Feb.  7,  1831;  see  C.  E.  L.,  II,  98. 

225  26.  means  Ken-ning.  This  etymology  is  no  longer  held. 
From  O.  E.  cynn,  race,  and  ing,  the  patronymic  ending,  meaning  "  a 
man  of  (noble)  race."     Kluge. 

225  30.  by  divine  right.  "  Kings  do  reign  by  divine  right,  or 
not  at  all.  The  King  that  were  God-appointed,  would  be  an  emblem 
of  God  and  could  demand  all  obedience  from  us.  But  where  is  that 
man.?  The  Best  Man,  could  we  find  him,  were  he."  C.-Joiir., 
Feb.  7,  1831  ;  cp.  C.  E.  L.,  98. 

225  33.  King  Popinjay.  See  Old  Mortality,  p.  25  f.  and  n 
Edin.,  1876. 

226  14.    Dead  and  of  the  Unborn.     Compare, 

Wandering  between  two  worlds,  one  dead, 
The  other  powerless  to  be  born, 
With  nowhere  yet  to  rest  my  head, 
Like  these  on  earth  I  wait  forlorn. 

Arnold,  Stanzas  from  the  Grande  CJiartreuse. 


380  NOTES.  IBk.  Ill,  Cap.  VII. 

227  13.     when  you  have. 

"  Walls  I  can  see  tumbled  down,  walls  I  see  also  a-building, 
Here  sit  prisoners,  there  likewise  do  prisoners  sit  : 
Is  tlie  world  then  itself  a  huge  prison  ?     Free  only  the  madman. 
His  chains  knitting  up  still  into  some  graceful  festoon  ?  " 

Essays,  GoetJie^s  Works,  iii.  213. 

From  Goethe,  JVeissagnngeu  dcs  Ba/cis,  13. 

227  15.  Peace  Society.  Founded  in  London  m  1816  by  the 
Society  of  Friends  after  the  long  Napoleonic  wars.  One  great 
result  which  it  has  achieved  is  the  establishment  of  international 
arbitration. 

227  22.     '  organic  filaments.'     See  222  8. 

227  23.  '  Hero-Worship.'  See  228  12  ff.  and  Carlyle's  Heroes 
and  Hero  -  IVors/iip,  passini. 

228  15.     Hero-worship.     See  227  23,  n. 

228  22.  Paris  and  Voltaire.  "  The  visit  to  Paris  was  perhaps 
a  falsification  of  this  prophecy  for  a  moment.  In  1778,  yielding 
either  to  the  solicitations  of  his  niece,  or  to  a  momentary  desire 
to  enjoy  the  triumph  of  his  renown  at  its  centre,  he  returned 
to  the  great  city  which  he  had  not  seen  for  nearly  thirty  years.  His 
reception  has  been  described  over  and  over  again.  It  is  one  of  the 
historic  events  of  the  century.  No  great  captain,  returning  from  a 
prolonged  campaign  of  difficulty  and  hazard,  crowned  by  most  glori- 
ous victory,  ever  received  a  more  splendid  and  far-resounding  greet- 
ing. It  was  the  last  great  commotion  in  Paris  under  the  old  regime." 
John  Morley,  Voltaire,  363  ;  cp.  Essays,  Voltaire,  II,  45-52. 

228  27.  laid  their  hair.  "  But  if  a  woman  have  long  hair,  it  is 
a  glory  to  her."     i  Cor.  xi.  15. 

228  31.     in  the  dry  tree.     Intentional  variation  of  Luke  xxiii.  31. 

229  2.     virtue  could  come  out.     See  195  8,  n. 
229  15.     There  is  no  Church.     See  39  11,  n. 
229  30.     Said  I  not.     See  221  20  ff. 

229  34.     ravelled  sleeve. 

Sleep,  that  knits  up  the  ravelled  sleeve  of  care. 

Macbeth,  ii.  2. 

230  7-15.  Prophet  .  .  .  Goethe.  See  39  ii,  n.  and  Essays. 
Death  of  Goethe,  III,  145-155. 

230  17.  Where  there  is  no  ministering  Priest.  Prov.  xxix. 
18,  adapted.  "  It  is  dreadful  to  live  without  vision.  When  there  is 
no  light  the  people  perish."    Journal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  80. 

230  20.     Communion  of  Saints.     See  223  13,  n. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VIII.]     NATURAL   SUPERNATURALISM.       381 

230  24.  Miserere.  The  50th  Psalm  in  the  Vulgate  begins  with 
the  words  miserere  met.  It  is  one  of  the  Penitentials,  and  is  em- 
bodied in  various  offices  of  the  church. 

230  30.     Morning  Stars  sing.     Job  xxxviit.  7,  adapted. 

231  1.  Natural  Supernaturalism.  In  some  respects  this  is  the 
most  important  chapter  in  Sartor.  "July  21  (1832).  A  strange 
feeling  of  supernaturalism,  of  '  the  fearfulness  and  wonderfulness ' 
of  life,  haunts  me  and  grows  upon  me."    Joiu-nal,  C  E.  Z.,  II,  293. 

231  6.     '  Cloth-webs  and  Cob-webs.'     See  59  21. 

231  10.  Phantasms,  Time  and  Space.  "  Perhaps,  indeed,  he  H 
is  mxetaphysician  enough  to  know  that  Time  and  Space  are  but 
quiddities,  not  entities  ;  forms  of  the  human  soul,  Laws  of  Thought, 
which  to  us  appear  independent  existences,  but,  out  of  our  brain, 
have  no  existence  whatever  :  in  which  case  the  whole  nodus  may  be 
more  of  a  logical  cobweb  than  any  material  perplexity.  Let  us  see 
how  he  unravels  or  cuts  it."  Essays,  Goethe'' s  Helena,  I,  172  f.  ;  cp. 
48  14  n. 

231  16.     Holy  of  Holies.     See  90  1,  n. 

231  19.     promised  land.     See  Deut.  xix.  8,  xxvii.  3. 

231  21.  *  Courage,  then  !  '  Diogenes  made  this  remark  at  least 
twice,  according  to  Diogenes  Laertius.  Once,  when  a  tedious  lec- 
ture was  near  its  close,  he  said,  "Courage,  friends  !  I  see  land"; 
and  when  he  saw  a  boy  throwing  stones  at  a  gallows,  "  Courage  ! 
you  will  attain  your  object."      Vit.  Philos.,  vi. 

232  2.  King  of  Siam.  "  The  Indian  prince  who  refused  to 
believe  the  first  relations  concerning  the  effects  of  frost,  reasoned 
justly."  Hume,  Inquiry  Concerning  the  Humati  Understandittg, 
sect.  X.  Of  Miracles.     Cp.  Talisman,  cap.  ii. 

232  7.  Open  sesame !  The  charm  used  to  open  the  cavern  in 
the  story  of  AH  Baba  or  the  Forty  Thieves  in  "  The  Arabian  Nights." 

232  13.  rising  .  .  .  from  the  dead.  Carlyle  seems  here  to  be 
combating  Hume.  "  When  any  one  tells  me  that  he  saw  a  dead 
man  restored  to  life,  I  immediately  consider  with  myself,  etc.,  etc." 
Inquiry  Cottcerning  the  Human  Understanding,  x.  Of  Miracles.  "  I 
have  seen  no  men  rise  from  the  dead  ;  I  have  seen  some  thou- 
sands rise  from  nothing.'^    fqurnal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  86. 

232  19.     Iron  swim.     See  2  Kings  vi.  6. 

232  29.  without  variableness.  From  James  i.  17;  incorrectly 
quoted. 

233  8.  Did  the  Maker.  This  is  the  argument  at  the  close  of 
Job.     See  cap.  xxxviii.  4-18. 


382  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VIII. 

233  15.  without  bottom.  This  is  a  phrase  which  occurs  in 
Scottish  prayers.  I  have  often  heard  the  love  of  God  compared  to 
•an  ocean  without  a  bottom  and  without  a  shore.' 

233  16.     Laplace's  Book.     See  1  I6,  n. 

233  23.  Herschel's  Fifteen-thousand  Suns.  Carlyle  refers  to 
the  division  of  the  heavens  into  squares,  an  astronomical  '  minute ' 
in  size,  for  the  purpose  of  computing  the  number  of  stars. 

234  4.    accident.     See  2  30,  n. 

234  11.  his  Creek.  "World  incidents,  too,  roll  forth  their  bil- 
lows into  the  remotest  creek,  and  alter  the  current  there."  Essays, 
Goethe's  Works,  III,  i8o. 

234  16.  whose  Author.  "  A  city  which  hath  foundations,  whose 
builder  and  maker  is  God."     Heb.  xi.  10. 

234  23.     here  a  line.     Isa.  xxviii.  10,  adapted. 

234  27.     some  Letters.     Cp.  31  I8  f. 

234  34.     Custom. 

Thus  conscience  does  make  cowards  of  us  all ; 

Hamlet,  iii.  i. 

235  24.     Am  I  to  view.     For  same  thought  cp.  50  7-9. 

236  9.  Luther's  Picture.  "  In  the  room  of  the  Wartburg,  where 
he  sat  translating  the  Bible,  they  still  show  you  a  black  spot  on  the 
wall  ;  the  strange  memorial  of  one  of  these  conflicts.  Luther  sat 
translating  one  of  the  Psalms  ;  he  was  worn-down  with  long  labour, 
with  sickness,  abstinence  from  food  :  there  rose  before  him  some 
hideous  indefinable  Image,  which  he  took  for  the  Evil  One  to  forbid 
his  work.  Luther  started  up,  with  fiend-defiance  ;  flung  his  inkstand 
at  the  spectre  and  it  disappeared  !  "  Carlyle,  Heroes  atid  Hero- 
Worship,  p.  129.     Lond.,  1874,     Cp.  D'Aubigne,  bk.  ix.  cap.  v. 

236  18.     Space  and  Time.     Cp.  231  10,  n. 

236  27.     Fortunatus.     See  141  is,  n. 

237  12.  Paul  and  Seneca.  They  were  contemporaries,  and 
there  is  a  spurious  set  of  letters  which  they  are  supposed  to  have 
interchanged.  Seneca  was  the  tutor  of  Nero  and  was  murdered  by 
his  orders  in  65  a.d.  He  wrote  various  dramas  and  philosophical 
treatises. 

238  6.    the  real  Being. 

AH  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good,  shall  exist ; 

Not  its  semblance,  but  itself  ;  no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor  power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melodist, 

When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 

Browning,  Abt  Vogler. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VIII.]     NATURAL   SUPERNATURALJSM.        383 

238  15.     (not  imaginings).     /><3!j^r  and  ed.  prin. 

238  24.  were  it  not  miraculous.  "  Miracle  ?  what  is  a  miracle  ? 
Can  there  be  a  thing  more  miraculous  than  any  other  thing  }  I 
myself  am  a  standing  wonder.  It  is  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty 
that  giveth  us  understanding."    Journal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  82. 

239  3.     Time-annihilating  Hat.     See  236  27. 

239  10.     Orpheus  or  Amphion. 

Dictus  et  Amphion,  Thebanae  coiiditor  urbis, 
Saxa  movere  sono  testudinis,  et  prece  blanda 
Ducere  quo  vellet. 

Horace,  Ars  Poetica,  394-6. 

^39  34.  stroke  .  .  .  transmitted.  Allusion  to  an  experiment 
in  physics  which  illustrates  the  transmission  of  energy  from  body  to 
body.  A  number  of  spheres  hang  from  strings  at  rest.  If  one  be 
drawn  away  and  allowed  to  impinge  on  the  second,  the  middle 
spheres  remain  at  rest,  while  the  last  one  springs  away. 

240  3.     Time-annihilating  Hat.     See  239  3. 

240  8.  City  of  God.  Reference  to  S.  Augustine,  De  Civitate 
Dei? 

240  15.  The  English  Johnson.  "  Churchill  in  his  poem  entitled 
'  The  Ghost,'  availed  himself  of  the  absurd  credulity  imputed  to 
Johnson  and  drew  a  caricature  of  him  under  the  name  of  *  Pomposo,' 
representing  him  as  one  of  the  believers  in  the  story  of  a  Ghost  in 
Cock-lane,  which,  in  the  year  1762,  had  gained  very  general  credit  in 
London."  BosweWs  Johnson,  sjib  an7t.,  1763.  See  also  ibid.,  note, 
for  full  account. 

240  27.    Are  we  not  Spirits.     Cp.  241  is,  n. 

241  1.     squeak  and  gibber.     Carlyle  spelt  it  '  jibber.' 

''         In  the  most  high  and  palmy  state  of  Rome, 
A  little  ere  the  mightiest  Julius  fell, 
The  graves  stood  tenantless  and  the  sheeted  dead 
Did  squeak  and  gibber  in  the  Roman  streets. 

Hamlet,  i.  i. 

241  4.  Dance  of  the  Dead.  See  Holbein'' s  Dance  oj  Death,  by 
F.  Douce,  Lond.,  1890,  and  Ruskin,  Sesanie  and  Lilies,  Lecture  i. 
end. 

241  5.     scent  of  the  morning-air.     See  Hajulet,  I,  v.  58 ;  cp. 

Rapp'  !    Rapp'  !     Mich  dilnkt,  der  Hahn  schon  ruft, 

Bald  wird  der  Sand  verrinnen. 

Rapp'  !   Rapp'  !     Ich  wittre  Morgenluft  — 

Burger,  Lenore. 

Carlyle  would  know  Scott's  translation,  "  I  smell  the  morning  air." 


384  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  VIII. 

241  7.  Alexander  of  Macedon.  The  Great  (356-323  n.c).  He 
defeated  Darius  at  these  two  battles.  For  Arbela,  see  Creasy 's 
Fifteen  Decisive  Battles  of  the  World. 

241  12.     Spectre-hunt.     See  144  7,  n. 

241  18.  it  is  mysterious.  "What  am  I  but  a  sort  of  ghost? 
Men  rise  as  apparitions  from  the  bosom  of  the  night,  and  after 
grinning,  squeaking,  gibbering  some  space,  return  thither.  The 
earth  they  stand  on  is  bottomless  ;  the  vault  of  their  sky  is  infini- 
tude ;  the  life-//w^  is  encompassed  with  eternity.  O  wonder  !  And 
they  buy  cattle  or  seats  in  Parliament,  and  drink  coarser  or  finer 
fermented  liquors,  as  if  all  this  were  a  city  that  had  foundations." 
founial,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  Z7. 

241  31.     beyond  plummet's  sounding. 

And  deeper  than  did  ever  plummet  sound 
I  'II  drown  my  book. 

Tempest,  v.  i. 

242  16.     haste  stormfuUy. 

Our  life  was  but  a  battle  and  a  march, 

And,  like  the  wind's  blast,  never  resting,  homeless. 

We  storm'd  across  the  war-convulsed  Earth. 

Schiller,  IVallensteins  Tod,  act  iii.  sc.  15. 

"  Ein  ruheloser  Marsch  war  unser  Leben,"  quoted  by  Carlyle,  Life 
of  Schiller,  p.  113.     Lond.,  1874. 

242  17.  Earth's  mountains.  *'  We  remove  mountains  and  make 
seas  our  smooth  highway ;  nothing  can  resist  us.  We  war  with 
rude  Nature  ;  and  by  our  resistless  engines,  come  off  always  victori- 
ous, and  loaded  with  spoils."  Essays,  Signs  of  the  Times,  II,  131. 
"  I  think  I  have  got  rid  of  materialism.  Matter  no  longer  seems  to 
me  so  ancient,  so  unsubduable,  so  certaiji  and  palpable  as  mind. 
/  am  mind  ;  whether  matter  or  not  I  know  not,  and  care  not." 
foicrnal,  C.  E.  L.,  II,  82. 

242  25.    from  God.     Cp.  24  23. 

Du  kamst,  du  giengst  mit  leiser  Spur, 
Ein  fliicht'ger  Gast  im  Erdenland  ; 
Woher?    Wohin  ?    Wir  wissen  nur  : 
Aus  Gottes  Hand,  in  Gottes  Hand. 

Uhland,  A7i/  den  Tod  ei^ies  Kindes. 

"  Man  issues  from  eternity  ;  walks  in  a  *  Time  Element '  encom- 
passed by  eternity,  and  again  in  eternity  disappears.  Fearful  and 
wonderful !  This  only  we  know,  that  God  is  above  it,  that  God 
made  it,  and  rules  it  for  good."  Letter  to  f.  Carlyle,  C.  E.  L.,  II, 
328. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  IX.]  CIRCUMSPECTIVE.  385 

242  26.     We  are  such  stuff.     Tempest,  iv.  i. 

242  28.  In  his  Liberty,  Equality,  Eratei-nity  (p.  299,  N.  Y.,  1873), 
Stephen  inserts  this  passage  (from  241  18  to  the  end  of  the  chapter) 
with  these  comments.  "  I  have  quoted  the  passage  which  forms,  so 
to  speak,  the  last  word  on  this  subject  of  the  great  logician  of  our 
age.  I  will  quote,  in  order  to  give  form  to  what  I  have  been  trying 
to  say,  a  passage  which  is  perhaps  the  most  memorable  utterance  of 
its  greatest  poet.  The  poetry  seems  to  me  to  go  far  deeper  into  the 
heart  of  the  matter  than  the  logic."  lb.,  p.  298.  "  I  know  of  no 
statement  which  puts  in  so  intense  and  impressive  a  form  the  belief 
which  appears  to  me  to  lie  at  the  very  root  of  all  morals  whatever  — 
the  belief,  that  is,  that  I  am  one ;  that  my  organs  are  not  I  ;  that  my 
happiness  and  their  well-being  are  differeait  and  may  be  inconsistent 
with  each  other ;  that  pains  and  pleasures  differ  in  kind  as  well  as  in 
degree  ;  that  the  class  of  pleasures  and  pains  which  arise  from  virtue 
and  vice  respectively  cannot  be  measured  against  those,  say  of 
health  and  disease,  inasmuch  as  they  affect  different  subjects  or 
affect  the  same  subjects  in  a  totally  different  manner."  lb.,  p.  300  ; 
cp.  Obiter  Dicta,  p.  45.     Lond.,  1887. 

243  12.     through  a  glass,     i  Cor.  xiii.  12. 

243  15.     Earth-Spirit's  speech.     See  48  23  and  n. 
243  20.     And  like  the  baseless.     See  242  26,  n. 

243  28.     Palingenesia.     See  197  5  and  bk.  iii.  cap.  v. 

244  7.  as  was  said.     See  185  I6  ff. 

245  4.  British  Reader.     See  270  30-34. 
245  11.    Horngate. 

Sunt  geminae  Somni  portae  quarum  altera  fertur 
Cornea,  qua  veris  facilis  datur  exitus  umbris. 

^71.  vi.  893  f. 

245  13.  Pierre-Pertuis,  petra  pertusa,  a  natural  opening  in  the 
rock  forty  feet  high,  between  Tavannes  and  Sancboz,  in  the  Bernese 
Alps.     It  was  the  boundary  of  old  Helvetia. 

245  26.  Magna  Charta.  "  Sir  Robert  Cotton,  one  day  at  his 
tailor's,  discovered  (what  must  have  been  the  antiquary's  astonish- 
ment ! )  that  the  man  held  in  his  hand,  ready  to  cut  up  for  measures 
—  the  original  Magna  Charta,  with  all  its  appendages  of  seals  and 
signatures."     D'Israeli,  Curiosities  of  Literature,  I,  34.     Lond.,  18 17. 

246  1.  Codification.  In  1832,  Bentham  was  still  alive,  "codify- 
ing like  any  dragon,"  to  use  his  o^vn  phrase.  Carlyle  is  sincere  in 
putting  his  own  work  above  that  of  the  Benthamists. 


386  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  X. 

246  13.     Palingenesie.     See  197  5. 

246  21.     'architectural  ideas.'     See  30  n. 

246  33.     live,  move.     See  2  26,  n. 

246  34.     Dandies.     See  51  23,  n. 

247  18.     '  Divine  Idea  of  Cloth.'     See  189  28,  n. 

248  1.    Mistress'  eyebrow. 

And  then  the  lover 
Sighing  like  a  furnace,  with  a  woeful  ballad 
Made  to  his  mistress'  eyebrow. 

As  You  Like  It,  ii.  7. 

248  2.  Clotha.  Parody  on  the  first  line  of  the  yEneid,  "  Anna 
virumque  cano,"  etc.  — Macaronic  verses.  A  recondite  pun.  Maca- 
roni was  a  name  applied  to  English  fops  about  1775  (see  53  2,  n.). 
The  verse  bearing  this  name  is  "a  kind  of  burlesque  composition 
in  which  the  vernacular  words  of  one  or  more  modern  languages 
are  intermixed  with .  genuine  Latin  words  and  with  hybrids  formed 
by  Latin  terminations  to  other  roots."  Carlyle's  quotation,  1.  2,  is 
an  example  of  this.  See  also  the  chorus  of  doctors  at  the  close  of 
Le  Malade  imaginaire  and  BosweWs  Johnson,  III,  253  and  n.  Oxon., 
1826. 

248  23.  Siamese  Twins.  The  tv/o  boys  joined  together  at  the 
breast  were  exhibited  in  London  before  1830,  and  Lytton  wrote  a 
satire  with  this  title. 

248  24.  wonderful  wonder.  Burlesque  of  showman's  language. 
Swift  used  it  as  the  title  of  one  of  his  squibs.  See  Works,  II,  421. 
London,  1870  ;  also  for  variant,  ib.,  p.  421  ;  cp.  194  16. 

248  31.  it  skills  not.  Matters  not ;  a  Shaksperian  word.  See 
Twelfth  Night,  v.  i;    Tuning  of  the  Shrew,  iii.  2  ;  2  Henry  VI.,  iii.  i. 

248  32.     passes  by.     Luke  x.  32,  adapted. 

248  34.  like  that  of  Chivalry.  *'But  the  age  of  chivalry  is 
gone."  Burke,  Reflections  on  the  French  Revoliitioji.  Works,  II, 
348.     Lend.,  1876. 

250  15.  Manicheism.  The  heresy  of  Mani  or  Manes,  the  Per- 
sian. "  In  Manicheism  we  find  the  aim  to  be  perfection,  the  utmost 
possible  estrangement  from  all  that  pertains  to  the  world."  Neander, 
General  History  of  the  Christian  Religion  and  Chicrch,  ii.  158. 
Lond.  1851  (Bohn);  see  ib.,  pp.  157-195,  and  Mohler,  Kirchen- 
geschichte,!,  316,  for  accounts  of  Manicheism  — Gnostic  shape. 
"  Christian  heretics  so  called,  it  being  a  name  almost  all  the  ancient 
heretics  affected  to  take,  to  express  that  new  knowledge  and  extraor. 
dinary   light    to   which    they  made   pretensions ;    the  word  gnostic 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  X.]  THE   DANDIACAL   BODY.  387 

signifying  a  learned  or  enlightened  person."  Howard^s  New  Royal 
Cyclopaedia  ;  article  Gnostic. 

250  21.  Athos  Monks.  See  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  vol.  VIII. 
cap.  Ixiii,  p.  43 ;  Paris,  1840,  for  an  interesting  account  of  this 
practice. 

250  25.  Zerdusht.  Zarathrushtra  pronounced  by  the  Greeks, 
Zoroaster.  —  Quangfoutchee.  Usually  spelled  Confucius,  the  Chi- 
nese sage. 

250  29.  Ahrimanism.  Ahriman  is  the  principle  of  evil  and 
darkness  ;  continually  at  war  with  Ormuzd,  is  the  principle  of  good 
and  light,  in  the  old  Persian  religion.  "  Before  heaven  or  earth 
existed,  the  great  god  Zervan  prayed  a  thousand  years,  and  spake  : 
'  Were  I  perchance  to  obtain  a  son,  Vormist  (Ormuzd),  who  will 
create  heaven  and  earth  ? '  and  he  begat  two  in  his  body,  one  by 
virtue  of  his  prayer,  the  other  because  he  said  perchance.  The  first 
was  Ahriman,  the  son  of  doubt,  the  principle  which  makes  every- 
thing a  question."  Neander,  General  History  of  the  Christian 
Religion  and  Church,  II,  171,  n.     Lond.,  1S51  (Bohn). 

251  5.  Lingua-franca.  Play  on  words.  In  ridicule  of  the  rage 
for  sprinkling  French  terms  through  the  English  writings  of  the  day. 
See  Bulwer's  novels.  It  means  literally  '  the  Frank  language,'  and 
is  a  mixture  of  Italian  wath  Arabic,  Greek,  etc.,  in  use  among  the 
peoples  about  the  Mediterranean. 

251  6.  Nazarene.  Carlyle's  genius  has  not  kept  him  from  falling 
into  the  common  error  of  confusing  Nazarite,  a  Jew  under  certain 
vows  (see  Numb.  ii.  2  £f.),  and  Nazarene,  a  citizen  of  Nazareth. 

251  7.     unspotted.     James  i.  27,  adapted. 

251  11.  Almack's.  Or  Willis's,  a  fashionable  suite  of  assembly 
rooms  in  King  street,  St.  James's  ;  closed  in  1890.  The  word  is 
sometimes  supposed,  but  incorrectly,  to  be  a  transposition  of  McAU, 
the  name  of  the  first  keeper.  It  was  here  that  Carlyle  began  his 
course  of  six  lectures  on  German  literature,  on  May  i,  1837. 

251  31.    scrannel-piping. 

And  when  they  list,  their  lean  and  flashy  songs 
Grate  on  their  scrannel  pipes  of  wretched  straw. 

Lycidas,  123  f. 

252  6.  Fire-balls.  Referring  to  the  unsuccessful  attempt  of  the 
emperor  Julian  to  rebuild  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem.  See  Milman's 
Gibbon,  vol.  Ill,  cap.  xxiii.  p.  114  and  n.     Paris,  1840. 


388  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill.Cap.  X. 

252  22.  Mohamedan  reverence.  "  It  is  the  custom  of  the  Mo- 
hametans,  if  they  see  any  printed  or  written  paper  on  the  ground,  to 
take  it  up  and  lay  it  aside  carefully,  as  not  knowing  but  it  may  con- 
tain some  piece  of  their  Alcoran."     Spectator,  No.  85. 

252  30.     not  without  asperity.     See  258  12,  n. 

252  31.  Pelham,  ^'or  the  Adventures  of  a  Gentleman,"  1827, 
among  the  earliest  of  the  first  Lord  Lytton's  novels.  The  tone  may 
be  inferred  from  the  extract  in  the  note  253  11.  "Pelham  the 
puppy,"  Calverley  calls  the  hero.  "  Dandy  literature  and  superfine 
sensibilities  are  tokens  and  causes  of  a  degenerate  art  and  an  emas- 
culate morality ;  and  among  offenders  in  this  way  none  has  sinned 
more,  or  is  of  higher  mark  for  a  gibbet  than  the  author  of  Aly  N'ovel.'''' 
Geo.  Brimley,  Essays,  p.  280.     Lond.,  1882. 

253  8.  Confession  of  Faith.  The  extended  statement  of  belief 
held  by  the  Church  of  Scotland. — Whole  Duty.     See  177  17,  n. 

253  11.  Seven  distinct  Articles.  Carlyle  does  not  invent  or 
exaggerate,  as  the  following  extract  will  testify.  Unfortunately  it 
does  not  appear  in  the  later  expurgated  editions  of  the  novel. 

"  And  here,  as  1  am  wearied  of  speaking  of  tailors,  let  us  reflect  a 
little  upon  their  works.  In  the  first  place,  I  deem  it  the  supreme 
excellence  of  coats,  not  to  be  too  well  made  ;  they  should  have  noth- 
ing of  the  triangle  about  them  ;  at  the  same  time,  wrinkles  behind 
should  be  carefully  avoided  ;  the  coat  should  fit  exactly,  though 
without  effort ;  I  hold  it  as  a  decisive  opinion,  that  this  can  never  be 
the  case  where  any  padding,  (beyond  one  thin  sheet  of  buckram, 
placed  smoothly  under  the  shoulders,  and  sloping  gradually  away 
towards  the  chest,)  is  admitted.  The  collar  is  a  very  important 
point,  to  which  too  much  attention  cannot  be  given.  I  think  I  would 
lay  down,  as  a  general  rule  (of  course  dependent  on  the  mode,)  that 
it  should  be  rather  low  behind,  broad,  short,  and  slightly  rolled.  The 
tail  of  the  coat  must  on  no  account  be  broad  or  square,  unless  the 
figure  be  much  too  thin  ;  —  no  license  of  fashion  can  allow  a  man 
of  delicate  taste  to  adopt,  and  imitate  the  posterial  luxuriance  of  a 
Hottentot.  On  the  contrary,  I  would  lean  to  the  other  extreme,  and 
think  myself  safe  in  a  swallow-tail.  With  respect  to  the  length 
allotted  to  the  waist,  I  can  give  no  better  rule  than  always  to  adopt 
that  proportion  granted  us  by  nature.  The  gigot  sleeve  is  an  abomi- 
nable fashion  ;  anything  tight  across  the  wrist  is  ungraceful  to  the 
last  degree  ;  moreover,  such  tightness  does  not  suffer  the  wristband 
to  lie  smooth  and  unwrinkled,  and  has  the  effect  of  giving  a  large 
and  clumsy  appearance  to  the  hand. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  X.]         THE   DANDIACAL    BODY.  389 

"  Speaking  of  the  hand,  I  would  observe,  that  it  should  never  be 
entirely  ringless,  but  whatever  ornament  of  that  description  it  does 
wear,  should  be  distinguished  by  a  remarkable  fastidiousness  of 
taste.  I  know  nothing  in  which  the  good  sense  of  a  gentleman  is 
more  finely  developed  than  in  his  rings  ;  for  my  part,  I  carefully 
eschew  all  mourning  rings,  all  hoops  of  embossed  gold,  all  diamonds, 
and  very  precious  stones,  and  all  antiques,  unless  they  are  peculiarly 
fine.  One  may  never  be  ashamed  of  a  seal  ring,  nor  of  a  very  plain 
gold  one,  like  that  worn  by  married  women  ;  rings  should  in  general 
be  simple,  but  singular,  and  bear  the  semblance  of  a  gage  d'atnotir. 
One  should  never  be  supposed  to  buy  a  ring,  unless  it  is  a  seal  one. 

"  Pardon  this  digression.  One  word  now  for  the  waistcoat  ;  this, 
though  apparently  the  least  observable  article  in  dress,  is  one  which 
influences  the  whole  appearance  more  than  any  one  not  profoundly 
versed  in  the  habilatery  art  would  suppose.  Besides,  it  is  the  only 
main  portion  of  our  attire  in  which  we  have  full  opportunity  for  the 
display  of  a  graceful  and  well-cultivated  taste.  Of  an  evening,  I  am 
by  no  means  averse  to  a  very  rich  and  ornate  species  of  vest ;  but 
the  extremest  caution  is  necessary  in  the  selection  of  the  spot,  the 
stripe,  or  the  sprig,  which  forms  the  principal  decoration  —  nothing 
tawdry  —  nothing  common  must  be  permitted  ;  if  you  wear  a  fine 
waistcoat,  and  see  another  person  with  one  resembling  it,  forthwith 
bestow  it  upon  your  valet.  A  white  waistcoat  with  a  black  coat  and 
trowsers,  and  a  small  chain  of  dead  gold,  only  partially  seen,  is  never 
within  the  bann  of  the  learned  in  such  matters  ;  but  beware,  oh, 
beware  of  your  linen,  your  neckcloth,  your  collar,  your  frill,  on  the 
day  in  which  you  are  tempted  to  the  decent  perpetration  of  a  white 
waistcoat !  All  things  depend  upon  their  arrangement  ;  in  a  black 
waistcoat,  the  sins  of  a  tie,  or  the  soils  of  a  shirt-bosom,  escape 
detection  ;  with  a  white  one,  there  is  no  hope.  If,  therefore,  you 
are  hurried  in  your  toilet,  or  in  a  misanthropic  humour  at  the 
moment  of  settling  your  cravat,  let  no  inducement  suffer  you  to 
wear  a  vesture  which,  were  all  else  suitable,  would  be  the  most  unex- 
ceptionable you  could  assume. 

"  Times,  by  the  bye,  are  greatly  changed  since  Brummell  interdicted 
white  waistcoats  of  a  morning.  I  do  not  know  whether,  during  the 
heat  of  the  season,  you  could  induct  yourself  in  a  more  gentle  and 
courtly  garment.  The  dress  waistcoat  should  generally  possess  a 
rolling  and  open  form,  giving  the  fullest  opening  for  the  display  of 
the  shirt,  which  cannot  be  too  curiously  fine  ;  if  a  frill  is  exquisitely 
washed,  it  is  the  most  polished  form  in  which   your  bosom   appur- 


390  NOTES.  [Ek.  Ill,  Cap.  X. 

tenances  should  be  moulded  ;  if  not  —  if,  indeed,  your  own  valet,  or 
your  mistress,  does  not  superintend  their  lavations,  I  would  advise  a 
simple  plait  of  the  plainest  fashion. 

"  With  regard  to  the  trowsers,  be  sure  that  you  have  them  exceed- 
ingly tight  across  the  hips  ;  if  you  are  well  made,  you  may  then  leave 
their  further  disposition  to  Providence,  until  they  reach  the  ankle. 
There  you  must  pause,  and  consider  well  whether  you  will  have 
them  short,  so  as  to  develope  the  fineness  of  the  bas  de  soie,  or 
whether  you  will  continue  them  so  as  to  kiss  your  very  shoe  tie  ;  in 
the  latter  form,  which  is  indisputably  the  most  graceful,  you  must  be 
especially  careful  that  they  flow  down,  as  it  were,  in  an  easy  and 
loose  (but,  above  all,  not  baggy)  fall,  and  that  the  shoe-strings  are 
arranged  in  the  dernier  faf07i  of  a  bow  and  end.  Of  a  morning, 
the  trowsers  cannot  be  too  long  or  too  easy,  so  that  they  avoid  every 
outre  and  singular  excess."    Pelham,  vol.  II,  cap.  vii.  pp.  63-67,  2d  ed. 

254  15.     Hallanshakers.     Sturdy  beggars.    Jamieson. 

254  21.  Ribbonmen.  This  secret  society  originated  in  1808.  It 
was  similar  in  organization  and  hostile  to  the  Orangemen.  —  Peep- 
o'-Day  Boys.  A  Protestant  secret  society  which  committed  their- 
outrages  at  dawn.  Their  purpose  was  to  drive  the  Catholics  from 
their  farms  "  to  hell  or  Connaught."  Froude,  English  in  Ireland, 
II,  131.     Lond.,  1887. 

254  22.  Rockites.  Intimidating  letters  to  obnoxious  persons 
were  often  signed  '  Captain  Rock.'  Cp.  Moore,  Memoirs  of  Captain 
Rock.     Lond.,  1824. 

255  10.     Nazarene.     See  219  i,  n. 

255   19.     it  did.     "  It  seemed  indescribable."    Eraser,  and  ed.  prin. 

255  32.  University-cap.  The  "  flat-cap "  or  "  mortar-board." 
"  You  should  see  him  (Hobbes)  with  his  flat  cap  on  his  head,  as  if  he 
had  covered  his  portfolio  with  black  cloth  and  sewed  it  to  his  calotte!" 
"A  Journey  to  England  in  1663."     Ni7ieteenth  Century.    July,  1892. 

255  33.  indicate  a  Slavonic.  The  race  name  for  these  peoples 
is  Slav. 

256  3.  Hertha.  See  Tacitus,  Germania,  xl.,  where  the  new 
reading  is  '  Nerthum,  id  est,  Terram  matrem '  ;  and  also  Arthur 
Murphy,  Works  of  Cornelius  Tacitus,  567,  n.  7.     N.  Y.,  1852. 

256  5.  in  private  Oratories.  In  August,  1824,  Carlyle  visited 
the  iron  and  coal  works  of  Birmingham,  and  what  he  saw  then  gave 
him  henceforth  a  deep  interest  in  the  working  classes.  For  a  most 
graphic  description  of  these  sights,  see  E.  Lett.,  312  f.;  C.  E.  L.,  I, 
238  f. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  X.]         THE   DANDIACAL   BODY.  391 

256  15.  in  wicker  idols.  Referring  to  the  periodical  agrarian 
outrages  in  Ireland  and  Caesar's  notice  of  Druidical  worship  ;  — 
"  Alii  inmani  magnitudine  simulacra  habent,  quorum  contexta  vimi- 
nibus  membra  vivis  hominibus  complent  ;  quibus  succensis  circum- 
venti  flam  ma  exanimantur  homines."      Bell.  Gall.,  vi.  16. 

256  17.  RhizophagOUS.  "  In  Ethiopia  above  Egypt,  near  to  the 
river  Asa,  inhabit  a  people  call'd  Rizophages,  who  get  up  the  Roots 
of  the  Canes  that  grow  in  the  Marishes,  and  first  wash  them  very 
clean  :  Then  they  bruise  and  pound  'em  with  Stones  till  they  are 
soft  and  pliant  ;  afterwards  they  lay  a  handful  of  'em  in  the  Sun  till 
they  are  broil'd,  and  this  is  the  Food  they  live  upon  all  their  days." 
Diod.  Siculus,  bk.  iii.  cap.  ii.  Trans.,  G.  Booth.     Lond.,  1700. 

256  21.  Brahminical  feeling.  The  Brahmins,  the  highest  or 
priestly  caste  among  the  Hindus,  apply  the  command,  '  Thou  shalt 
not  kill '  universally.     The  first  of  the  Five  Rules  runs, 

Kill  not  —  for  Pity's  sake  —and  lest  ye  slay 
The  meanest  thing  upon  its  upward  way. 
Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  TJte  Light  of  Asia,  p.  232.    Lond.,  1884. 

See   S.  H.  Kellogg,  The  Light  of  Asia  and  the  Light  of  the  World, 
p.  271.     Lond.,  1885. 

256  27.  Potatoes-and-Point.  A  popular  Irish  joke,  not  unknown 
in  this  country.  At  his  frugal  meal  of  potatoes,  with  no  '  condi- 
ments '  but  salt  and  hunger,  the  peasant  will  point  to  the  flitch  of 
bacon  hanging  from  the  rafters  of  his  cabin,  as  if  to  bring  this  luxury 
into  some  remote  relationship  with  his  homely  fare.  The  action 
may  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  wave  or  heave  offering  to  appease  the 
insatiable  deity  of  digestion. 

256  31.  Potheen.  Pronounced  '  ptit-yeen,'  illicitly  distilled  whis- 
key.    For  its  effects  see  Lever's  novels,  passim. 

257  9.  the  following  sketch.  "  Shortly  before  our  close  at 
Sligo,  a  party  of  us  proposed  to  take  a  ride  into  the  country,  the 
first  fine  Sunday  morning,  to  view  some  adjacent  spots  of  renowned 
picturesque,  and  return  home  to  dinner.  The  weather  proving 
favourable  the  ensuing  Sabbath,  we  fulfilled  our  design.  Having 
taken  our  fill  of  the  beauties  of  Nature,  we  then  began  to  think  of 
satisfying  another  sense  —  the  palate,  and  ro'de  to  a  shebeen-house 
situated  on  one  corner  of  a  common,  with  the  usual  distinctions  of  a 
red  stocking,  pipe-stem,  and  certain  characters  chalked  on  a  board, 
signifying  to  those  who  could  read  them  that  entertainment  was  to 
be  had  within  for  man  and  beast. 


392  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  X. 

"  The  furniture  of  this  caravansera  consisted  of  a  large  iron  pot, 
two  oaken  tables,  two  benches,  two  chairs,  and  a  whiskey  noggin  ; 
there  was  a  loft  above  (attainable  by  a  ladder),  upon  whicH  the 
inmates  slept  ;  and  the  space  below  was  divided  by  a  hurdle  into  two 
apartments,  —  the  one  for  their  cow  and  pig,  the  other  for  them- 
selves and  guests. 

'•  On  entering  the  house,  we  discovered  the  family  at  dinner, 
(eleven  in  number)  —  the  father  sitting  at  the  top,  the  mother  at  the 
bottom,  and  the  children  on  each  side  of  a  large  oaken  board,  which 
was  scooped  out  in  the  middle,  like  a  trough,  to  receive  the  contents 
of  the  pot  of  'paratees.'  Little  holes  were  cut  at  equal  distances  to 
contain  salt,  and  a  bowl  of  milk  stood  on  the  table  ;  but  all  the 
luxuries  of  meat  and  beer,  bread,  knives,  and  dishes,  were  dispensed 
with.  They  ate  as  Nature  dictated,  and  as  God  had  given  ;  —  they 
ate,  and  were  satisfied. 

"  The  landlord  was  of  the  ordinary  broad-backed,  black-browed 
breed,  with  a  leg  like  an  elephant's,  a  face  as  round  as  the  shield  of 
Douglas  and  a  mouth  which,  when  open,  bore  the  same  proportion 
to  his  head  that  the  sea  does  to  th^e  land.  His  wife  was  a  sun- 
browned  but  well-featured  woman,  and  his  young  ones  (but  that  they 
had  a  sort  of  impish  hilarity  about  them)  were  chubby,  and  bare 
enough  for  so  many  Cupids."  John  Bernard,  Retrospections  of  the 
Stage,  2  vols.,  Lond.,  1830  ;  I,  xi.  pp.  348-350.  For  notice  of 
Bernard,  see  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  s.  v. 

258  10.     appetite  of  ravens.     See  Ps.  cxlvii.  9,  Job  xxxviii.  41. 

258  12.  the  Dandiacal  Household.  The  passage  in  quotation 
marks  is  transcribed  with  a  few  unimportant  changes  from  the  intro- 
duction to  Bulwer's  novel.  The  Disowned.  Fraser  had  a  feud  with 
Bulwer,  and  this  extract  was  quoted  and  ridiculed  in  the  magazine 
for  June,  1830  (vol.  I,  No.  v.)  ;  which  Carlyle  must  have  seen. 
There  was  also  an  attack  on  Bulwer  in  the  April  number,  in  an 
article  entitled.  The  Dominie'' s  Legacy. 

259  4.     Self-worship.     See  250  25. 

259  31.     Manicheans.     See  250  15,  n. 

260  2.  Potwallopers.  Pot-boilers  :  wallop  being  connected  with 
well  (O.K.  weallan).  House-keepers  or  lodgers  who  prepare  their 
own  food  ;  the  name'of  a  class  of  voters  in  England  before  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  See  3  11,  n.  "Every male  inhabit- 
ant, whether  house-keeper  or  lodger,  who  had  resided  six  months  in 
the  borough,  and  had  not  been  chargeable  to  any  township  as  a 
pauper  for  twelve  months,  was  entitled  to  vote."     Century  Diet. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  XI.]  TAILORS.  3Q3 

260  11.  Buchan-Bullers.  The  Bullers  of  Buchan  is  the  local 
name  of  a  huge  vertical  well  in  the  granite  sea  shore,  six  miles  south 
of  Peterhead  in  Aberdeenshire.  It  is  fifty  feet  in  diameter  and  one 
hundred  in  depth,  and  in  storms  the  sea  rushes  into  it  with  great 
violence  through  an  archway  in  the  bottom.  Cp.  Nodes  Ambro- 
sianae,  IV,  58,  n.  Edin.,  1865.  "They,  you  know,  are  not  only 
always  black,  but  always  boiling,  and  the  reason  is  that  day  and 
night  the  abysses  are  disturbed  by  the  sea.  The  sea  will  not  let 
them  rest  in  peace  —  but  fills  them,  whether  they  will  or  no,  with 
perpetual  foam  —  everlasting  breakers  —  an  eternal  surf.  In  the 
calmest  day,  the  lull  itself  is  dreadful.  Yet  the  place  is  not  without 
its  beauty,  and  all  the  world  confesses  that  it  is  sublime."  Greek 
Drama  ;  Blackwood'' s  Mag.,  1831,  p.  389. 

260  17.  Electric  Machines.  "  Wealth  has  accumulated  itself 
into  masses  ;  and  Poverty,  also  in  accumulation  enough,  lies  impassa- 
bly separated  from  it  ;  opposed,  uncommunicating,  like  forces  in 
positive  and  negative  poles."     Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  25. 

262  4.     Pelion  on  Ossa. 

Ter  sunt  conati  imponere  Pelio  Ossam 

Scilicet,  atque  Ossae  frondosum  involvere  Olympum. 

Georg.  i.  281,  282. 

262  4.     Moloch.     See  Levit.  xviii.  21,  xx.  2-5,  and  Par.  Lost,  ii. 

262  5.  Michael  of  Justice.  According  to  Edersheim,  Gabriel 
('  the  Hero  of  God ')  represents  Judgment,  while  Michael  ('  who  is 
like  God')  represents  Mercy.  vSee  The  Life  and  Times  of  Jesus  the 
Messiah,  II,  751  ;   5th  ed. 

262  13.  fractional  parts.  The  proverb  is,  "  Nine  tailors  make 
a  man,"  or  "  Nine  tailors  made  me  a  man."     Cp.  229  19. 

262  19.  Tailor's  Melancholy.  "That  there  is  a  professional 
melancholy,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  incident  to  the  occupation  of  a 
tailor,  is  a  fact  which  I  think  very  few  will  venture  to  dispute.  .  .  . 
I  find  a  most  remarkable  passage  in  Burton  in  his  chapter  entitled 
'  Bad  diet  a  cause  of  melancholy.'  *  Amongst  herbs  to  be  eaten  (he 
says)  I  find  gourds,  cucumbers,  melons  disallowed  ;  but  especially 
Cabbage.  It  causeth  troublesome  dreams,  and  sends  up  black 
vapours  to  the  brain.  Galen,  Loc.  Affect.,  lib.  iii.  cap.  6,  of  all  herbs 
condemns  Cabbage.  And  Izaak,  lib.  ii.  cap.  i,  animae  gravitatem 
facit,  it  brings  heaviness  to  the  soul.'  I  could  not  omit  so  flattering 
a  testimony  from  an  author,  who  having  no  theory  of  his  own  to 
serve,  has  so  unconsciously  contributed  to  the  confirmation  of  mine. 


394  NOTES.  [Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  XI. 

It  is  well  known  that  this  last  named  vegetable  has,  from  the  earliest 
periods  which  we  can  discover,  constituted  almost  the  sole  food  of 
this  extraordinary  race  of  people."  Lamb,  On  the  Melancholy  of 
Tailors,  Cp.  Burton,  Anatoviy  of  Melancholy,  part  i.  sec.  2,  mem.  2, 
subs.  I.  '  Cabbage  '  also  means  to  steal  bits  of  cloth.  See  Hotten's 
Slang  Dictionary. 

262  22.  Hans  Sachs.  A  German  poet  (i 494-1 576)  and  Meister- 
singer  of  Niirnberg.  "  Hans  Sachs  is  a  curious  fellow ;  both  in  age 
and  character ;  full  of  humour,  reading,  honesty,  good  nature ;  of 
the  quickest  observation,  three  hundred  years  old,  and  —  a  shoe- 
maker ;  what  a  strange  medley  may  we  not  expect  !  Is  his  way  of 
treating  Heaven,  Christus,  etc.,  like  that  of  our  old  mysteries  .''  See 
the  Tailor  with  the  Flag."  C.four.,  p.  33.  Dec,  1826.  See  also 
Goethe,  Hans  Sachsens  Poetische  Sendnng  ;  Longfellow,  Nnremberg. 
The  Schneider  mit  dent  Paftier  tells  how  a  thievish  tailor  was  fright- 
ened by  seeing  in  a  dream  a  huge  banner  made  of  the  snippets  of 
cloth  he  had  stolen. 

262  25.  Taming  of  the  Shrew.  See  act  iv.  sc.  iii.,  especially 
Petruchio's  speech  beginning  "  O  monstrous  arrogance  !  " 

262  26.  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  source  of  these  anecdotes  I  have 
been  unable  to  find. 

263  4.  sartorius.  The  longest  muscle  of  the  body,  crossing  the 
thigh  :  so  called  because  it  produces  the  cross-legged  position 
assumed  by  tailors  at  work. 

263  11.  Swift.  "  They  worshipped  a  sort  of  idol,  etc."  Tale  of 
a  Tub.  A  definite  unmistakable  reference  to  the  germ  passage  from 
which  Teufelsdrockh's  whole  philosophy  grew.     See  Introd. 

263  14.    Franklin. 

Eripuit  coelo  fulmen 
Sceptrumque  tyrannis. 

Motto   by  Turgot  for  the  picture   of   Franklin   by  Duplessis.     See 
Life  and  Memoirs  of  F.,  vol.  I,  front.,  and  II,  p.  288.     Lond.,  1818. 
263  29.     "  Nay,  if  thou."     Unidentified. 

263  34.     ninth  part.     See  262  1.3,  n. 

264  15.  St.  Sophia.  The  church  of  the  Heavenly  Wisdom  at 
Constantinople.  For  description  see  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall, 
cap.  xl.  pp.  65-68.     Paris,  1840. 

264  18.     Caaba.     See  264  20,  n. 

264  20.  Arabian  Whinstone.  The  "  veil  "  {kiswa)  is  of  black 
brocade  with  a  broad  band  of  gold  embroidery,  consisting  of  texts 
from  the  Koran.     The  Caaba  is  a  four-square  building  in  the  great 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  XII.]  FAREWELL.  39^ 

mosque  at  Mecca  ;  and  in  one  corner  is  a  black  aerolite,  before 
which  the  faithful  repeat  prayers.  Carlyle  does  not  seem  to  have 
distinguished  between  the  building  and  the  fetish-stone  in  its  wall. 
See  Littre,  MnA^x  pierre  noire. 

264  26.  Sic  itur.  A^fteid,  ix.  641.  Quoted  ironically  in  a  letter 
of  Carlyle  to  his  brother  John,  Sept.  17,  1823.     C.  E.  Z.,  I,  192. 

265  9.  Haggis.  "  A  mess  of  minced  lights,  livers,  suet,  oat 
meal,  onions  and  pepper  inclosed  in  a  sheep's  stomach.  .  .  .  The 
Scotch  in  general  are  attached  to  this  composition  with  a  sort  of 
national  fondness."  Humphrey  Clinker^  p.  248  f.  Edin.,  1806. 
For  another  Scotchman's  feelings  on  the  subject,  consult  Burns,  To 
a  Haggis. 

266  26.  Hannibal-like.  "  Fama  etiam  est,  Hannibalem  annorum 
ferme  novem,  pueriliter  blandientem  patri  Hamilcari,  ut  duceretur  in 
Hispaniam,  quum,  perfecto  Africo  bello,  exercitum  eo  traiecturus 
sacrificaret,  altaribus  admotum,  tactis  sacris  iureiurando  adactum, 
se,  quum  primum  posset,  hostem  fore  populo  Romano."  Livy, 
xxi.  I. 

267  11.  dashes  his  sponge.  "  You  have  heard,  said  he,  with- 
out doubt,  of  that  Painter  famed  in  Story  who  being  to  paint  the 
Foam  of  a  Horse,  and  not  succeeding  to  his  Mind,  threw  at  the 
Picture  in  Resentment  a  Sponge  bedaubed  with  colours,  and  pro- 
duced a  foam  the  most  natural  imaginable."  Works  of  James 
Harris,  I,  6  f.;  Lond.,  1803.  The  painter  was  Apelles.  See  Dio 
Chrysostom.,  Orat.,  63,  p.  390  ;  Paris,  1604  ;  where  the  incident  is 
told  at  length.  Cp.  G.-Corr.,  285,  where  Carlyle  applies  the  phrase 
to  Sartor. 

267  29.  It  is  the  Night.  "Man  has  walked  by  the  light  of 
conflagrations,  and  amid  the  sound  of  falling  cities  ;  and  now  there 
is  darkness  and  long  watching  till  it  be  morning.  The  voice  even  of 
the  faithful  can  but  exclaim  :  '  As  yet  struggles  the  twelfth  hour  of 
the  Night  :  birds  of  darkness  are  on  the  wing,  spectres  upsoar,  the 
dead  walk,  the  living  dream  —  Thou,  Eternal  Providence,  wilt  cause 
the  day  to  dawn  !  '  "  (Richter,  Hesperus,  Vorrede)  Essays,  Charac- 
teristics, in,  36. 

268  7.    lone  watchtower.     Cp.  3  14. 
268  18.     Watchman.     See  Isa.  xxi.  11. 

268  23.     Population-Institute.     See  205  14,  n. 

268  29.  Ew.  Wohlgeboren.  About  equivalent  to  "Your  Honor," 
a  German  form  of  respectful  address  in  letter-writing. 

269  6.     Three  Days.     See  3  11,  n. 


39^  ^OTES.  [Hk.  ni,  Cap.  XII. 

269  23.  Saint-Simonian.  Carlyle's  article,  The  Signs  of  the 
Times,  attracted  the  attention  of  the  St.  Simonian  Society,  and  led 
to  his  being  the  recipient  of  such  a  communication  as  this  of  Teufels- 
drockh's.     See  G.-Corr.,  214  f.,  225  ;  see  269  33,  n. 

269  27.  Here  also.  "  The  Saint  Simonians  in  Paris  have  again 
transmitted  to  me  a  large  mass  of  their  performances  :  Expositions 
of  their  Doctrines  ;  Proclamations  sent  forth  during  the  famous 
Three  Days  j  many  numbers  of  their  weekly  Journal.  They  seem 
to  me  to  be  earnest,  zealous  and  nowise  ignorant  men,  but  wander- 
ing in  strange  paths.  I  should  say  they  have  discovered  and  laid  to 
heart  this  momentous  and  now  almost  forgotten  truth,  Man  is  still 
Man  ;  and  are  already  beginning  to  make  false  applications  of  it." 
G.-Corr.,  258  ;  cp.  C  E.  Z.,  II,  84. 

269  28.  Man  is  still  Man.  In  Essays,  Characteristics,  III,  47, 
referring  to  the  "younger  nobler  minds"  of  France,  Carlyle  says: 
"  Meanwhile  let  us  rejoice  rather  that  so  much  has  been  seen  into, 
were  it  through  never  so  diffracting  media,  and  never  so  madly 
distorted  ;  that  in  all  dialects,  though  but  half-articulately,  this  high 
Gospel  begins  to  be  preached :    Man  is  still  Man."     See  269  27,  n. 

269  33.  Bazard-Enfantin.  Saint  Simon  (1760-1825)  was  a 
pupil  of  D'Alembert  and  the  predecessor  of  Comte.  His  greatest 
work  is  the  New  Christianity.  He  insisted  on  the  necessity  of  a 
new  and  positive  organization  of  society ;  and  that  the  whole  of 
society  ought  to  strive  towards  the  amelioration  of  the  moral  and 
physical  existence  of  the  poorest  class.  Bazard  and  Enfa^itin  were 
his  pupils.  They  gave  a  course  of  lectures  on  his  doctrine  in  Paris, 
and  formed  there  an  association  or  family  of  three  grades  which 
lived  out  of  a  common  purse. 

270  30-34.  British  Readers  .  .  .  invective.  " '  Sartor,'  when 
it  began  to  appear  in  '  Fraser '  piecemeal,  met  a  still  harder  judg- 
ment. No  one  could  tell  what  to  make  of  it.  The  writer  was  con- 
sidered a  literary  maniac,  and  the  unlucky  editor  was  dreading  the 
ruin  of  his  magazine."  C.  E.  L.,  II,  377.  "  Magazine  Fraser  writes 
that  *  Teufelsdrockh  '  excites  the  most  unqualified  disapprobation  — 
a  la  bonne  heure.^''  lb.,  418.  "  James  Fraser  writes  me  that 
Tetcfelsdrbckh  meets  with  the  most  unqualified  disapproval ;  which 
is  all  extremely  proper.  Hfs  payment  arrives,  which  is  still  more 
proper."  Lett.,  382.  "  '  Teufelsdrockh  '  beyond  measure  unpopu- 
lar ;  an  oldest  subscriber  came  in  to  him  and  said,  '  If  there  is  any 
more  of  that  d  —  d  stuff,  etc.,  etc'  "     C.  E.  L.,  II,  446. 

271  5.     Yorke  .  .  .  Oliver.     See  9  13,  n. 


Bk.  Ill,  Cap.  XII.j  FAREWELL.  297 

271  6-7.  madness  .  .  .  punch.  The  Nodes  Ambrosianae  in 
Blackwood  and  the  imitations  of  them  in  Eraser  were  transcribed 
from  life,  and  account  for  the  scurrilous  and  slovenly  articles  with 
which  the  early  numbers  of  these  magazines  abounded ;  for  instance, 
Kit  North's  attack  on  Tennyson,  and  O.  Yorke's  letterpress  for  the 
Eraser  portrait  of  Miss  Martineau.  The  decanters  and  glasses  of 
the  various  Eraser  portraits,  are  not  meaningless  accessories.  The 
article  which  drew  down  on  Hugh  Fraser  his  richly  deserved  flogging 
and  caused  his  death  was  written  by  Maginn  when  he  and  his  party 
were  half  drunk.  Carlyle's  contempt  for  the  Maga,  Eraser's  'dog's- 
meat  cart  of  a  magazine,'  and  the  ways  of  London  literary  men,  was 
complete  and  unaffected.     See  C.  E.  L.,  II,  90,  191,  215,  241  f.,  etc. 


ADDITIONAL    NOTES. 


xvi.  21.  could  not  possibly  have  made  any  woman  happy.  This 
sweeping  statement  is  left  in  its  pristine  crudity,  since  it  has  drawn 
from  no  less  an  authority  than  Professor  Norton  the  following  valu- 
able criticism,  which  is  reprinted  here  by  his  permission  : 

*'  I  believe  that  Carlyle  could  have  made  many  a  woman  happy, 
supposing  her  to  have  had  a  magnanimous  disposition  and  a  just 
appreciation  of  his  nature.  He  had  a  depth  of  tenderness  and  a 
capacity  of  sympathetic  expression  which  might  have  been  enough 
to  satisfy  the  heart  of  any  woman.  However  devoted  to  him,  and 
however  clear-sighted  she  might  have  been,  he  would  undoubtedly 
have  often  required  of  her  much  self-control,  and  tried  her  heart  by 
his  impatience  and  self-engrossment ;  but  I  think  that  he  would  have 
more  than  made  up  to  her  for  unusual  trials  by  giving  her  unusual 
joys. 

*'  It  is  a  hard  thing  to  say,  but  it  seems  to  me  true,  that  a  great  part 
of  Mrs.  Carlyle's  trial  arose  from  finding  herself  unexpectedly  the 
inferior  of  her  husband.  The  flattery  which  had  been  lavished  upon 
her  by  her  admirers,  including  Carlyle  himself,  had  led  her  to  an 
overestimate  of  her  intellectual  endowments  as  compared  with  his, 
no  less  than  to  an  overestimate  of  the  social  difference  that  existed 
between  them,  in  disregarding  which  she  felt  she  was  making  a  sac- 
rifice which  deserved  a  different  return  from  that  which  Carlyle  was 
ready  to  recognize  as  due  to  it.  I  do  not  underestimate  the  real 
sacrifices  she  made  for  his  sake.  That  she  had  a  false  estimate  of 
them  is  in  no  respect  surprising ;  but  I  think  one  can  discern  the 
gradual  growth  of  disappointment  and  bitterness  of  feeling  as  she 
was  compelled  to  recognize  the  superiority  of  her  husband,  not 
merely  in  his  intellectual  gifts,  but  in  his  position  in  the  world  so 
soon  as  those  gifts  were  recognized  by  it.  She  seems  to  me  to  have 
become  jealous  of  him,  not  in  the  usual  sense,  but  jealous  of  what 
many  a  wife  would  have  been  proud  of  ;  and  if  one  can  believe  the 
indications  which  her  own  letters  afford  even  more  than  his,  she  not 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES. 

infrequently  embittered  both  their  lives  by  a  display  of  a  lack  of 
generosity  that  was  not  at  all  compensated  for  by  her  sacrifices  in 
behalf  of  their  common  household.  I  do  not  lose  sight  of  all  that 
she  had  to  endure  from  Carlyle's  temperament,  from  his  ill  health, 
from  his  selfish  engrossment  in  his  own  work,  or  from  that  change 
which  many  a  woman  has  to  endure,  —  from  the  adoration  of  the 
lover  to  the  critical  attitude  of  the  husband  tired  with  daily  work, 

•'  It  is  a  sad  story,  because  at  the  bottom  of  each  of  their  hearts 
was,  I  believe,  the  sincerest  love  for  each  other.  But  my  point  just 
now  is  not  so  much  to  account  for  their  unhappiness  as  to  express 
my  conviction  that  a  woman  of  less  self-regardful  nature,  and  more 
fortunate  in  the  discipline  of  early  life,  might  have  been  made 
essentially  happy  by  Carlyle." 

xlv.  10.  set  the  notion.  See  Appendix,  p.  403.  The  writer  of  the 
review,  Alexander  H.  Everett,  has  no  doubt  that  Sartor  is  '*  very 
strongly  tinged  throughout  with  the  peculiar  idiom  of  the  German 
language." 

2  10.  of  History.  Add  to  Note  :  Part  of  Hegel's  system  is  a  phil- 
osophy of  history. 

7  9.  business  and  bosoms.  "  I  doe  now  publish  my  Essayes  ;  which 
of  all  my  other  works  haue  beene  most  Currant :  For  that,  as  it 
seemes,  they  come  home,  to  Mens  Businesse,  and  Bosomes."  Bacon, 
hitrod.  to  Essays  to  Lord  Buckingham. 

8  7.  to  revolve  them.  Add  to  N'ote :  Alexander'' s  Feast  was  writ- 
ten after  Dryden  translated  the  ^neid.  The  use  of  the  term  is  a 
Latinism.    Cp. 

Under  their  grateful  shade  ^neas  sate 
Revolving  war's  events,  and  various  fate. 

^tteid,  X.  235  f. 

Hie  magnus  sedet  i'Eneas,  secumque  volutat 
Eventus  belli  varies. 

^neid,  x.  159  f. 

13  10.  in  petto.  Add  to  N'ote,  after  "  Cardinals  "  :  It  is  also  used 
of  Cardinals  whom  the  Pope  intends  to  create,  but  whose  name 
he  withholds  for  the  time  being. 

37  26.  sheet-iron  Aprons.  After  256  5,  in  Note,  add :  "  And 
through  the  whole,  half-naked  demons  pouring  with  sweat  and 
besmeared  with  soot  were  hurrying  to  and  fro  in  their  red  night- 
caps and  sheet-iron   breeches,  rolling  or  hammering   or  squeezing 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES. 

their  glowing  metal  as  though  it  had  been  wax  or  dough."  E. 
Lett.,  313. 

48  22.  Garment  of  God.  Cp.  "  For  Nature  is  no  longer  dead, 
hostile  Matter,  but  the  veil  and  mysterious  Garment  of  the  Unseen." 
Essays,  Novalis,  II,  107. 

53  25.  Improved-drop.  "  The  vulgar  and  ungentlemanly  dirty 
'  new  drop '  and  dog-like  agony  of  infliction  upon  the  sufferers  of  the 
English  sentence."     Byron,  Letter  to  Murray,  May  30,  1817. 

58  18.  Chrysostom.  Delete  in  A^<?/^ .•  "I  have  ,  .  .  phrase,"  and 
add  :  Carlyle  got  the  phrase  from  Tristram  Shandy,  vol.  V,  cap.  i. 
(orig.  ed.) :  "  Who  made  man,  .  . .  the  miracle  of  Nature,  as  Zoroaster, 
in  his  book  Eept  <i>i5(rews,  called  him ;  —  the  Shekinah  of  the  Divine 
Presence  as  Chrysostom,  —  " 

125  17.  Preestablished  Harmony.  Add  to  Note :  "  It  is  true  that 
there  are,  in  my  opinion,  efforts  in  all  substances,  but  these  efforts  are 
properly  only  in  the  substance  itself ;  and  what  follows  in  the  others 
is  only  in  virtue  of  a  preestablished  harmony  (if  I  may  be  permitted 
to  use  this  w^ord),  and  in  no  wise  by  a  real  influence,  or  by  a  trans- 
mission of  some  property  or  quality."     Leibnitz,  Opusculum,  xiii. 

129  15.  Philistine.  Add  to  Note :  See  M.  Arnold,  Culture  and 
Anarchy,  cap.  iii. 

158  19.     carnage  .  .  .  manure.     Cp. 


How  that  red  rain  hath  made  the  harvest  grow  ! 

Byron,  Childe  Harold,  Cant.  iii.  xvii. 


159  25.  fiction  of  the  English  SmoUet.  "  I  remember,"  pro- 
ceeded this  champion,  "  when  I  was  a  slave  at  Algiers,  Murphy 
Macmorris  and  I  happened  to  have  some  difference  in  the  bagnio, 
upon  which  he  bade  me  turn  out.  '  Arrah,  for  what.?'  said  I, 
'  here  are  no  weapons  that  a  gentleman  can  use,  and  you  would  not 
be  such  a  negro  as  to  box  like  an  English  carman  !  '  After  he  had 
puzzled  himself  for  some  time,  he  proposed  that  we  should  retire  into 
a  corner  and  funk  one  another  with  brimstone  till  one  of  us  should 
give  out.  Accordingly  we  crammed  half  a  dozen  of  tobacco  pipes 
with  sulphur,  and,  setting  foot  to  foot,  began  to  smoke,  and  kept  a 
constant  fire,  until  Macmorris  dropped  down."  The  Adventures 
of  Ferdina7id,  Count  Fathom,  cap.  xli. 

205  2.  "  Champion  of  England."  Add  to  Note :  The  "  difficulty  " 
is  figurative.     The  hereditary  champion  at  this  time  was  a  clergyman, 


ADDITIONAL  NOTES. 

the  Rev.  John  Dymoke,  and  by  the  permission  of  the  court  of 
Claims,  his  son  Henry  took  his  place. 

215  17.  incautious  beards.  Add  to  Note :  The  'fable'  is  the  basis 
of  the  lost  '  satyric  '  drama  of  i^schylus,  Prometheus.  See  Campbell, 
Guide  to  Greek  Tragedy.,  159.     Lond.  1891. 

219  17.     the  Prison.     In  Note  after  Essays,  I,  115,  add  :  Cp. 


Out  of  this  f oule  prisoun  of  this  lyf  ? 

Chaucer,  Knighi's  Tale,  2203. 


233  15.     without  bottom.     Add  to  Note  :  Cp. 

There  being  no  end  of  words,  nor  any  bound 
Set  to  conceipt,  the  Ocean  without  shore. 

6".  Daniel,  I,  290  (Grosart's  ed.),  Florws  Montaigne. 

263  28.  Guild-brother.  Goethe.  The  following  passage  seems  to 
be  based  on  Faust,  Vor spiel  auf  dent  Theater,  124  f. : 

Wer  sichert  den  Olymp,  vereinet  Gotter? 
Des  Menschen  Kraft,  im  Dichter  offenbart. 

Postscript.  —  To  Prof.  J.  T.  Hatfield  I  owe  the  note  for  263  28, 
to  Prof.  W.  Tweedie  those  for  7  9  and  158  19,  and  to  Miss  Mary  S. 
Jordan,  of  Smith  College,  those  for  58  18  and  205  2.  It  is  a  pleasure 
to  acknowledge  my  indebtedness  and  to  record  my  thanks  for  their 
help.  A.  M. 


APPENDIX. 


This  questionable  little  Book  was  undoubtedly  written 
among  the  mountain  solitudes,  in  1831  ;  but  owing  to  impedi- 
ments natural  and  accidental,  could  not,  for  seven  years  more, 
appear  as  a  Volume  in  England  ;  —  and  had  at  last  to  clip 
itself  into  pieces,  and  be  content  to  struggle  out,  bit  by  bit,  in 
some  courageous  Magazine  that  offered.  Whereby  now  to 
certain  idly  curious  readers,  and  even  to  myself  till  I  make 
study,  the  insignificant  but  at  last  irritating  question.  What  its 
real  history  and  chronology  are,  is,  if  not  insoluble,  consider- 
ably involved  in  haze. 

To  the  first  English  Edition,  1838,  which  an  American  or  two 
Americans  had  now  opened  the  way  for,  there  was  slightingly 
prefixed  under  the  title  '  Testimonies  of  Authors,''  some  straggle 
of  real  documents,  which,  now  that  I  find  it  again,  sets  the 
matter  into  clear  Ught  and  sequence  ;  —  and  shall  here,  for 
removal  of  idle  stumbling-blocks  and  nugatory  guessings  from 
the  path  of  every  reader,  be  reprinted  as  it  stood.  {Author's 
Note  of  1868.) 


TESTIMONIES  OF  AUTHORS. 

I.     Highest    Class,    Bookseller's    Taster. 

Taster  to  Booksetter.  —  "  The  Author  of  TeiifelsdrocJJi  is  a  person 
of  talent ;  his  work  displays  here  and  there  some  felicity  of  thought 
and  expression,  considerable  fancy  and  knowledge  :  but  whether  or 
not  it  would  take  with  the  public  seems  doubtful.  For  2ijeu  d"" esprit 
of  that  kind,  it  is  too  long  ;  it  would  have  suited  better  as  an  essay 
or  article  than  as  a  volume.     The  Author  has  no  great  tact  :  his  wit 


400 


APPENDIX. 


is  frequently  heavy;  and  reminds  one  of  the  German  Baron  who 
took  to  leaping  on  tables,  and  answered  that  he  was  learning  to  be 
lively.     Is  the  work  a  translation  ?  " 

Bookseller  to  Editor. — "Allow  me  to  say  that  such  a  writer 
requires  only  a  little  more  tact  to  produce  a  popular  as  well  as  an 
able  work.  Directly  on  receiving  your  permission,  I  sent  your  Ms. 
to  a  gentleman  in  the  highest  class  of  men  of  letters,  and  an  accom- 
plished German  scholar  :  I  now  enclose  you  his  opinion,  which,  you 
may  rely  upon  it,  is  a  just  one;  and  I  have  too  high  an  opinion  of 
your  good  sense  to"  &c.,  &c.  —  Ms.  {penes  nos),  London,  lyth  Sep- 
tember, i8ji.^ 

II.     Critic  of  the  Sun. 

"  Eraser's  Magazine  exhibits  the  usual  brilliancy,  and  also  the " 
&c.  "  Sartor  Resartus  is  what  old  Dennis  used  to  call  '  a  heap  of 
clotted  nonsense,'  mixed  however,  here  and  there,  with  passages 
marked  by  thought  and  striking  poetic  vigour.  But  what  does  the 
writer  mean  by  '  Baphometic  fire-baptism '  .^  Why  cannot  he  lay 
^  aside  his  pedantry,  and  write  so  as  to  make  himself  generally  intel- 
ligible ?  We  quote  by  way  of  curiosity  a  sentence  from  the  Sartor 
Resartus ;  which  may  be  read  either  backwards  or  forwards,  for  it 
is  equally  intelligible  either  way.  Indeed,  by  beginning  at  the  tail, 
and  so  working  up  to  the  head,  we  think  the  reader  will  stand  the 
fairest  chance  of  getting  at  its  meaning  :  '  The  fire-baptised  soul, 
long  so  scathed  and  thunder-riven,  here  feels  its  own  freedom ; 
which  feeling  is  its  Baphometic  baptism  :  the  citadel  of  its  whole 
kingdom  it  has  thus  gained  by  assault,  and  will  keep  inexpugnable  ; 
outwards  from  which  the  remaining  dominions,  not  indeed  without 
hard  battering,  will  doubtless  by  degrees  be  conquered  and  pacifi- 
cated.'     Here  is  a" —  .  .  .  — Siui  Newspaper,  ist  April,  1834. 

III.     North-American  Reviewer. 

..."  After  a  careful  survey  of  the  whole  ground,  our  belief  is 
that  no  such  persons  as  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  or  Counsellor 
Heuschrecke  ever  existed ;  that  the  six  Paper-bags,  with  their 
China-ink  inscriptions  and  multifarious  contents,  are  a  mere  figment 
of  the  brain  ;  that  the  'present  Editor'  is  the  only  person  who  has 
every  written  upon  the  Philosophy  of  Clothes ;  and  that  the  Sartor 
Resartus  is  the  only  treatise  that  has  yet  appeared  upon  that  sub- 

1  C.  E.  L.,  II,  200. 


APPENDIX. 


401 


ject  ;  —  in  short,  that  the  whole  account  of  the  origin  of  the  work 
before  us,  which  the  supposed  Editor  relates  with  so  much  gravity, 
and  of  which  we  have  given  a  brief  abstract,  is,  in  plain  English,  a 
hum. 

"  Without  troubling  our  readers  at  any  great  length  vaih.  our 
reasons  for  entertaining  these  suspicions,  we  may  remark,  that  the 
absence  of  all  other  information  on  the  subject,  except  what  is 
contained  in  the  work,  is  itself  a  fact  of  a  most  significant  character. 
The  whole  German  press,  as  well  as  the  particular  one  where  the 
work  purports  to  have  been  printed,  seems  to  be  under  the  control 
oi  Stilischweigen  and  Co.  —  Silence  and  Company.  If  the  Clothes- 
Philosophy  and  its  author  are  making  so  great  a  sensation  through- 
out Germany  as  is  pretended,  how  happens  it  that  the  only  notice 
we  have  of  the  fact  is  contained  in  a  few  numbers  of  a  monthly 
Magazine  published  at  London  ?  How  happens  it  that  no  intelli- 
gence about  the  matter  has  come  out  directly  to  this  country.''  We 
pique  ourselves  here  in  New  England  upon  knowing  at  least  as 
much  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  literary  way  in  the  old  Dutch  Mother- 
land as  our  brethren  of  the  fast-anchored  Isle ;  but  thus  far  we  have 
no  tidings  whatever  of  the  '  extensive  close-printed  close-meditated 
volume,'  which  forms  the  subject  of  this  pretended  commentary. 
Again,  we  would  respectfully  inquire  of  the  '  present  Editor '  upon 
what  part  of  the  map  of  Germany  are  we  to  look  for  the  city  of 
Wejssnichtwo,  —  *  Know-not-where,'  at  which  place  the  work  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  printed  and  the  Author  to  have  resided.  It  has 
been  our  fortune  to  visit  several  portions  of  the  German  territory, 
and  to  examine  pretty  carefully,  at  different  times  and  for  various 
purposes,  maps  of  the  whole  ;  but  we  have  no  recollection  of  any 
such  place.  We  suspect  that  the  city  of  Knoiv-not-ivhere  might  be 
called,  with  at  least  as  much  propriety,  N'obody-knows-where,  and  is 
to  be  found  in  the  kingdom  of  Nowhere.  Again,  the  village  of 
Entepfuhl,  —  'Duck -pond,'  where  the  supposed  Author  of  the  work 
is  said  to  have  passed  his  youth,  and  that  of  Hinterschlag,  where  he 
had  his  education,  are  equally  foreign  to  our  geography.  Duck- 
ponds  enough  there  undoubtedly  are  in  almost  every  village  in 
Germany,  as  the  traveller  in  that  country  knows  too  well  to  his  cost, 
but  any  particular  village  denominated  Duck-pond  is  to  us  altogether 
terra  incogtiita.  The  names  of  the  personages  are  not  less  singular 
than  those  of  the  places.  Who  can  refrain  from  a  smile  att  ho  keying 
together  of  such  a  pair  of  appellatives  as  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh  .? 
The  supposed  bearer  of  this  strange  title  is  represented  as  admitting 


402 


APPENDIX, 


in  his  pretended  autobiography,  that  '  he  had  searched  to  no  purpose 
through  all  the  Heralds'  books  in  and  without  the  German  empire, 
and  through  all  manner  of  Subscriber's-lists,  Militia-rolls,  and  other 
Name-catalogues,'  but  had  nowhere  been  able  to  find  '  the  name 
Teufelsdrockh,  except  as  appended  to  his  own  person.'  We  can 
readily  believe  this,  and  we  doubt  very  much  whether  any  Christian 
parent  would  think  of  condemning  a  son  to  carry  through  life  the 
burden  of  so  unpleasant  a  title.  That  of  Counsellor  Heuschrecke, 
—  'Grasshopper' — though  not  offensive,  looks  much  more  like  a 
piece  of  fancy  work  than  a  '  fair  business  transaction.'  The  same 
may  be  said  of  Blumine,  — '  Flower  Goddess  '  —  the  heroine  of  the 
fable,  and  so  of  the  rest. 

"  In  short,  our  private  opinion  is,  as  we  have  remarked,  that  the 
whole  story  of  a  correspondence  with  Germany,  a  university  of 
Nobody-knows-where,  a  Professor  of  Things  in  General,  a  Counsel- 
lor Grasshopper,  a  Flower-Goddess  Blumine,  and  so  forth,  has 
about  as  much  foundation  in  truth,  as  the  late  entertaining  account 
of  Sir  John  Herschel's  discoveries  in  the  moon.  Fictions  of  this 
kind  are,  however,  not  uncommon,  and  ought  not,  perhaps,  to  be 
condemned  vdth  too  much  severity ;  but  we  are  not  sure  that  we 
can  exercise  the  same  indulgence  in  regard  to  the  attempt  which 
seems  to  be  made  to  mislead  the  public  as  to  the  substance  of  the 
work  before  us,  and  its  pretended  German  original.  Both  purport, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  be  upon  the  subject  of  Clothes,  or  dress. 
Clothes,  their  Origin  and  Infljicjice,  is  the  title  of  the  supposed 
German  treatise  of  Professor  Teufelsdrockh,  and  the  rather  odd 
name  of  Sartor  Resartus,  —  the  Tailor  Patched,  —  which  the  present 
Editor  has  affixed  to  his  pretended  commentary,  seems  to  look  the 
same  way.  But  though  there  is  a  good  deal  of  remark  throughout 
the  work  in  a  half -serious,  half-comic  style  upon  dress,  it  seems  to 
be  in  reality  a  treatise  upon  the  great  science  of  Things  in  General, 
which  Teufelsdrockh  is  supposed  to  have  professed  at  the  university 
of  Nobody-knows-where.  Now,  without  intending  to  adopt  a  too 
rigid  standard  of  morals,  we  own  that  we  doubt  a  little  the  propriety 
of  offering  to  the  public  a  treatise  on  Things  in  General,  under  the 
name  and  in  the  form  of  an  Essay  on  Dress.  For  ourselves, 
advanced  as  we  unfortunately  are  in  the  journey  of  life,  far  beyond 
the  period  when  dress  is  practically  a  matter  of  interest,  we  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that  the  real  subject  of  the  work  is  to  us  more 
attractive  than  the  ostensible  one.  But  this  is  probably  not  the  case 
with  the  mass  of  readers.     To  the  younger  portion  of  the  commu- 


APPENDIX.  403 

nity,  which  constitutes  everywhere  the  very  great  majority,  the 
subject  of  dress  is  one  of  intense  and  paramount  importance.  An 
author  who  treats  it  appeals  like  the  poet,  to  the  young  men  and 
maidens,  —  virginibtis  puerisqtte,  —  and  calls  upon  them  by  all  the 
motives  which  habitually  operate  most  strongly  upon  their  feelings 
to  buy  his  book.  When,  after  opening  their  purses  for  this  purpose, 
they  have  carried  home  the  work  in  triumph,  expecting  to  find  in  it 
some  particular  instruction  in  regard  to  the  tying  of  their  neckcloths, 
or  the  cut  of  their  corsets,  and  meet  with  nothing  better  than  a 
dissertation  on  Things  in  General,  they  will,  —  to  use  the  mildest 
term,  —  not  be  in  very  good  humour.  If  the  last  improvements  in 
legislation,  which  we  have  made  in  this  country,  should  have  found 
their  way  to  England,  the  author  we  think  would  stand  some  chance 
of  being  Lynched.  Whether  his  object  in  this  piece  of  super cherie 
be  merely  pecuniary  profit,  or  whether  he  takes  a  malicious  pleasure 
in  quizzing  the  Dandies,  we  shall  not  undertake  to  say.  In  the 
latter  part  of  the  work,  he  devotes  a  separate  chapter  to  this  class  of 
persons,  from  the  tenor  of  which  we  should  be  disposed  to  conclude 
that  he  would  consider  any  mode  of  divesting  them  of  their  property 
very  much  in  the  nature  of  a  spoiling  of  the  Egyptians. 

"  The  only  thing  about  the  work,  tending  to  prove  that  it  is  what 
it  purports  to  be,  a  commentary  on  a  real  German  treatise,  is  the 
style,  which  is  a  sort  of  Babylonish  dialect,  not  destitute,  it  is  true, 
of  richness,  vigour,  and  at  times  a  sort  of  singular  felicity  of  expres- 
sion, but  very  strongly  tinged  throughout  with  the  peculiar  idiom  of 
the  German  language.  This  quality  in  the  style,  however,  may  be  a 
mere  result  of  a  great  familiarity  with  German  literature,  and  we 
cannot,  therefore,  look  upon  it  as  in  itself  decisive,  still  less  as 
outweighing  so  much  evidence  of  an  opposite  character."  —  North- 
American  Review,  No.  8g,  October,  /8jj.^ 

IV.     New-England  Editors. 

"  The  Editors  have  been  induced,  by  the  expressed  desire  of  many 
persons,  to  collect  the  following  sheets  out  of  the  ephemeral  pam- 
phlets 2  in  which  they  first  appeared,  under  the  conviction  that  they 
contain  in  themselves  the  assurance  of  a  longer  date. 

"  The  Editors  have  no  expectation  that  this  little  Work  will  have 
a  sudden  and  general  popularity.     They  will  not  undertake,  as  there 

*  See  Correspotidence  of  Carlyle  attd Emerson,  I,  84,  8g,  94.     Boston,  1886. 
2  Eraser's  (London)  Magazine,  1S33-4. 


404 


APPENDIX. 


is  no  need,  to  justify  the  gay  costume  in  which  the  Author  delights 
to  dress  his  thoughts,  or  the  German  idioms  with  which  he  has  sport- 
ive! y  sprinkled  his  pages.  It  is  his  humour  to  advance  the  graves 
speculations  upon  the  gravest  topics  in  a  quaint  and  burlesque 
style.  If  his  masquerade  offend  any  of  his  audience,  to  that  degree 
that  they  will  not  hear  what  he  has  to  say,  it  may  chance  to  draw 
others  to  listen  to  his  wisdom  ;  and  what  work  of  imagination  can 
hope  to  please  all }  But  we  will  venture  to  remark  that  the  distaste 
excited  by  these  peculiarities  in  some  readers  is  greatest  at  first,  and 
is  soon  forgotten  ;  and  that  the  foreign  dress  and  aspect  of  the 
Work  are  quite  superficial,  and  cover  a  genuine  Saxon  heart.  We 
believe,  no  book  has  been  published  for  many  years,  written  in  a 
more  sincere  style  of  idiomatic  English,  or  which  discovers  an  equal 
mastery  over  all  the  riches  of  the  language.  The  Author  makes 
ample  amends  for  the  occasional  eccentricity  of  his  genius,  not  only 
by  frequent  bursts  of  pure  splendour,  but  by  the  wit  and  sense  which 
never  fail  him. 

"  But  what  will  chiefly  commend  the  Book  to  the  discerning 
reader  is  the  manifest  design  of  the  work,  which  is,  a  Criticism  upon 
the  Spirit  of  the  Age  —  we  had  almost  said,  of  the  hour — in  which 
we  live;  exhibiting  in  the  most  just  and  novel  light  the  present 
aspects  of  Religion,  Politics,  Literature,  Arts,  and  Social  Life. 
Under  all  his  gaiety  the  Writer  has  an  earnest  meaning,  and  dis- 
covers an  insight  into  the  manifold  wants  and  tendencies  of  human 
nature,  which  is  very  rare  among  our  popular  authors.  The  philan- 
thropy and  the  purity  of  moral  sentiment  which  inspire  the  work, 
will  find  their  way  to  the  heart  of  every  lover  of  virtue."  —  Preface 
to  Sartor  Resartus :  Boston,  i8j6,  iSjj. 

Sunt,  Fuerunt  vel  Fuere. 
London,  joth  June,  i8j8. 


CARLYLE'S     INDEX. 


Action,  the  true  end  of  Man, 

i43»  145- 
Actual,  the,  the  true  Ideal,  178. 
Adamitism,  51. 
Afflictions,  merciful,  174. 
Ambition,  93. 
Apprenticeships,  no. 
Aprons,  use  and  significance  of, 

37- 
Art,    all   true    Works    of,    sym- 
bolic, 203. 

Baphometic   Fire-baptism,    153, 

154- 

Battlefield,  a,  157. 

Battle,  Life-,  our,  77  ;  with  Folly 
and  Sin,  112,  116. 

Being,  the  boundless  Phantas- 
magoria of,  46. 

Belief  and  Opinion,  176. 

Bible  of  Universal  History,  169, 
176. 

Biography,  meaning  and  uses  of, 
67  ;  significance  of  biographic 
facts,  183. 

Blumine,  125  ;  her  environment, 
126;  character  and  relation  to 
Teufelsdrockh,  127  ;  blissful 
bonds  rent  asunder,  134;  on 
her  way  to  England,  140. 

Bolivar's  Cavalry-uniform,  43. 

Books,  influence  of,  156,  180. 


Childhood,  happy  season  of,  80  ; 
early  influences  and  sports,  82. 

Christian  Faith,  a  good  Mother's 
simple  version  of  the,  89; 
Temple  of  the,  now  in  ruins, 
175;  Passive-half  of,  176. 

Christian  Love,  171,  174. 

Church-Clothes,  194  ;  living  and 
dead  Churches,  195  ;  the  mod- 
ern Church  and  its  News- 
paper-Pulpits, 229. 

Circumstances,  influence  of,  84. 

Clergy,  the,  with  their  surplices 
and  cassock-aprons  girt-on,  38, 
190. 

Clothes,  not  a  spontaneous 
growth  of  the  human  animal, 
but  an  artificial  device,  2  ;  an- 
alogy between  the  Costumes  of 
the  body  and  the  Customs  of 
the  spirit,  30  ;  Decoration  the 
first  purpose  of  Clothes,  33  ; 
what  Clothes  have  done  for 
us,  and  what  they  threaten  to 
do,  35,  50  ;  fantastic  garbs  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  40  ;  a  sim- 
ple costume,  43  ;  tangible  and 
mystic  influences  of  Clothes, 
45,  53 ;  animal  and  human 
Clothing  contrasted,  49 ;  a 
Court-Ceremonial  77tinus 
Clothes,     54 ;      necessity     for 


4o6 


INDEX. 


Clothes,  56 ;  transparent 
Clothes,  59  ;  all  Emblematic 
things  are  Clothes,  64,  245  ; 
Genesis  of  the  modern  Clothes- 
Philosopher,  72  ;  Character 
and  conditions  needed,  186, 
1 88  ;  George  Fox's  suit  of 
Leather,  189;  Church-Clothes, 
194;  Old-Clothes,  216  ;  prac- 
tical inferences,  246. 

Codification,  60. 

Combination,  value  of,  121,  267. 

Commons,  British  House  of,  36. 

Concealment.     See  Secrecy. 

Constitution,  our  invaluable 
Kritish,  226. 

Conversion,  179. 

Courtesy,  due  to  all  men,  216. 

Courtier,  a  luckless,  43. 

Custom  the  greatest  of  Weav- 
ers, 235. 

Dandy,  mystic  significance  of 
the,  247  ;  dandy  worship,  250 ; 
sacred  books,  251  ;  articles  of 
faith,  253  ;  a  dandy  household, 
258  ;  tragically  undermined  by 
growing  Drudgery,  259. 

Death,  nourishment  even  in,  96, 
152. 

Devil,  internecine  war  with  the, 
10,  108,  154,  167  ;  cannot  now 
so    much    as    believe    in  him, 

151- 

Dilettantes  and  Pedants,  61  ; 
patrons  of  Literature,  114. 

Diogenes,  192. 

Doubt  can  only  be  removed  by 
Action,  177.     See  Unbelief. 

Drudgery  contrasted  with  Dan- 
dyism, 254  ;    'Communion   of 


Drudges  '  and  what  may  come 
of  it,  259. 

Duelling,  a  picture  of,  164. 

Duty,  no  longer  a  divine  Mes- 
senger and  Guide,  but  a  false 
earthly  Fantasm,  147,  149 ; 
infinite  nature  of,  177. 

Editor's  first  acquaintance  with 
Teufelsdrockh  and  his  Phi- 
losophy of  Clothes,  5;  efforts 
to  make  known  his  discovery 
to  British  readers,  6 ;  admitted 
into  the  Teufelsdrockh  watch- 
tower,  16,  28;  first  feels  the 
pressure  of  his  task,  44 ;  his 
bulky  Weissnichtwo  Packet, 
66;  strenuous  efforts  to 
evolve  some  historic  order 
out  of  such  interminable  docu- 
mentary confusion,  70 ;  partial 
success,  79,  90,  141  ;  mysteri- 
ous hints,  183,  213;  astonish- 
ment and  hesitation,  226 ; 
congratulations,  244  ;  fare- 
well, 265. 

Education,  influence  of  early,  84  ; 
insignificant  portion  depend- 
ing on  Schools,  91 ;  educa- 
tional Architects,  95  ;  the 
inspired  Thinker,  207. 

Emblems,  all  visible  things,  64. 

Emigration,  209. 

Eternity,  looking  through  Time, 
17,  65,  203. 

Evil,  Origin  of,  172. 

Eyes  and  Spectacles,  61. 

Facts,  engraved  Hierograms,  for 
which  the  fewest  have  the 
key,  184. 


INDEX. 


407 


Faith,  the  one  thing  needful,  146. 
Fantasy,    the    true  Heaven-gate 

or     Hell-gate    of    man,     131, 

199. 
Fashionable  Novels,  251. 
Fatherhood,  ^d. 

Feebleness,  the  true  misery,  149. 
Fire,  and  vital  fire,  63,  155. 
Force,  universal  presence  of,  63. 
Fortunatus'    Wishing-hat,    236, 

239- 

Fox's,  George,  heavenward 
aspirations  and  earthly  inde- 
pendence, 189. 

Frase7-''s  Alagazine,  7,  271. 

Frederick  the  Great,  symbolic 
glimpse  of,  72. 

Friendship,  now  obsolete,  107  ; 
an  incredible  tradition,  150, 
210 ;  how  it  were  possible, 
194,  267. 

Futteral  and  his  wife,  72. 

Future,  organic  filaments  of  the, 
221. 

Genius,  the  world's  treatment  of, 

US- 
German  speculative  Thought, 
3,  II,  24,  27,  49;  historical 
researches,  32,  67. 

Gerund-grinding,  95. 

Ghost,  an  authentic,  240. 

God,  the  unslumbering,  omni- 
present, eternal,  48 ;  God's 
presence  manifested  to  our 
eyes  and  hearts,  58  ;  an  ab- 
sentee God,  147. 

Goethe's  inspired  melody,  230. 

Good,  growth  and  propagation 
of,  89. 

Great  Men,  161.     See  Man. 


Gullibility,  blessings  of,  100. 
Gunpowder,  use  of,  34,  164. 

Habit,  how,  makes  dullards  of 
us  all,  50. 

Half -men,  167. 

Happiness,  the  whim  of,  173. 

Hero-worship,  the  corner-stone 
of  all  Society,  228. 

Heuschrecke  and  his  biographic 
documents,  8  ;  his  loose,  zig- 
zag, thin-visaged  character,  21 ; 
unaccustomed  eloquence,  and 
interminable  documentary  su- 
perfluities, 66  ;  bewildered 
darkness,  268. 

History,  all-inweaving  tissue  of, 
18  ;  by  what  strange  chances 
do  we  live  in,  43;  a  perpetual 
Revelation,  161,  176,  230. 

Homer's  Iliad,  204. 

Hope,  this  world  emphatically 
the  place  of,  146;  false 
shadows  of,  169. 

Horse,  his  own  tailor,  49. 

Ideal,  the,  exists  only  in  the 
Actual,  178,  180. 

Imagination.     See  Fantasy. 

Immortality,  a  glimpse  of,  237. 

Imposture,  statistics  of,  100. 

Independence,  foolish  parade  of, 
211,  227. 

Indifference,  centre  of,  154. 

Infant  intuitions  and  acquire- 
ments, 79  ;  genius  and  dulness, 
84. 

Inspiration,  perennial,  176,  189, 
230. 

Invention,  34. 

Invisible,  the.  Nature  the  visible 


4o8 


INDEX. 


Garment  of,  48 ;  invisible 
bonds,  uniting  all  Men  to- 
gether, 53 ;  the  Visible  and 
Invisible,  59,  197. 

Irish,  the,  Poor-Slave,  254. 

Isolation,  97. 

Jesus  of  Nazareth,  our  divinest 
Symbol,  203,  207. 

King,  our  true,  chosen  for  us  in 

Heaven,  225. 
Kingdom,  a  man's,  109. 
Know   thyself,    and   what    thou 

canst  work  at,  149. 

Labour,  sacredness  of,  206. 
Land-owning,  trade  of,  115. 
Language,      the      Garment      of 
Thought,  64  ;    dead  vocables, 

95- 

Laughter,  significance  of,  29. 

Lieschen,  20. 

Life,  Human,  picture  of,  17,  137, 
155,  170;  Life-purpose,  121  ; 
speculative  mystery  of,  150, 
220,  240  ;  the  most  important 
transaction  in,  1 53  ;  nothing- 
ness of,  166. 

Light  the  beginning  of  all  Crea- 
tion, 178. 

Logic-mortar  and  wordy  Air- 
castles,  47  ;  underground 
workshop  of  Logic,  60,  200. 

Louis  XV.,  ungodly  age  of,  148. 

Love,  what  we  emphatically 
name,  122  ;  pyrotechnic  phe- 
nomena of,  124,  201  ;  not  alto- 
gether a  delirium,  130  ;  how 
possible  in  its  highest  form, 
171,  194,  267. 


Ludicrous,  feeling  and  instances 
of  the,  42,  164. 

Magna  Charta,  245. 

Malthus's  over-population  panic, 
205. 

Man,  by  nature  naked,  2,  50,  55  ; 
esssntially  a  tool-using  ani- 
mal, 35  ;  the  true  Shekinah, 
58  ;  a  divine  Emblem,  64,  197, 
199,  217,  241;  two  men  alone 
honourable,  206.  See  Think- 
ing Man. 

Metaphors  the  stuff  of  Lan- 
guage, 64. 

Metaphysics  inexpressibly  unpro- 
ductive, 47. 

Milton,  149. 

Miracles,  significance  of,  231, 
238. 

Monmouth-Street  and  its  "  Ou' 
clo'"  Angels  of  Doom,  219. 

Mother's,  a,  religious  influence, 
89. 

Motive-Millwrights,  200. 

Mountain  scenery,  138. 

Mystery,  all-pervading  domain 
of,  61. 

Nakedness  and  hypocritical 
Clothing,  50,  56 ;  a  naked 
Court-Ceremonial,  54 ;  a  naked 
Duke  addressing  a  naked 
House  of  Lords,  55. 

Names,  significance  and  influ- 
ence of,  78,  235. 

Napoleon  and  his  Political  Evan- 
gel, 162. 

Nature,  the  God-written  Apoca- 
lypse of,  46,  58  ;  not  an  Ag- 
gregate, but  a  Whole,  62,  139, 


INDEX. 


409 


222,  234;  Nature  alone  an- 
tique, 92  ;  sympathy  with,  137, 
163  ;  the  '  Living  Garment  of 
God,'  171  ;  Laws  of  Nature, 
232. 

Necessity,  brightened  into  Duty, 
88. 

Newspaper  Editors,  39 ;  our 
Mendicant  Friars,  229. 

Nothingness  of  Life,  166. 

Obedience,   the    Lesson  of,    89, 

226. 
Orpheus,  239. 
Over-population,  205. 
Own,    conservation  of  a  man's, 

181. 

Paradise  and  Fig-leaves,  32  ; 
prospective  Paradises,  122,131. 

Passivity  and  Activity,  88,  145. 

Past,  the,  inextricably  linked 
with  the  Present,  155  ;  for- 
ever extant,  236. 

Paupers,  what  to  do  with,  20S. 

Peace-Era,   the    much-predicted, 

159- 

Peasant  Saint,  the,  207. 
Pelham,  and  the  Whole  Duty  of 

Dandies,  252. 
Perseverance,  law  of,  215. 
Person,    mystery   of   a,  58,  118, 

121,  217. 
Philosophies,    Cause-and-Effect, 

31- 
Phoenix,  Death-birth,    216,   221, 

243- 
Property,  181. 
Proselytising,  7,  267. 

Radicalism,  Speculative,  11,  25, 
56. 


Raleigh's,  Sir  Walter,  fine  man- 
tle, 42. 

Religion,  dead  letter  and  living 
spirit  of,  104  ;  weaving  new 
vestures,  196,  250. 

Reverence,  early  growth  of,  90  ; 
indispensability  of,  227. 

Richter,  28. 

Saints,    living     Communion    of, 

224,  230. 
Sarcasm,  the  panoply  of,  118. 
Sartor   Resartiis,   genesis  of,  7  ; 

its  purpose,  243. 
Saturn  or  Chronos,  117. 
Savage,  the  aboriginal,  ^^r 
Scarecrow,    significance  of   the, 

55- 
Sceptical  goose-cackle,  61. 
School   education,  insignificance 

of,  91,  95  ;    tin-kettle   terrors 

and  incitements,  93 ;    need  of 

Soul-Architects,  95. 
Science,  the   Torch   of,   i  ;     the 

Scientific  Head,  60. 
Secrecy,  benignant  efficacies  of, 

198. 
Self-activity,  24. 
Self-annihilation,  169. 
Shame,      divine,     mysterious 

growth  of,   35  ;    the  soil  of  all 

Virtue,  198. 
Silence,     163 ;     the    element  in 

which  all  great  things  fashion 

themselves,  198. 
Simon's,  Saint,    aphorism  of  the 

golden  age,  2 1 5  ;  a  false  appli- 
cation, 269. 
Smoke,  advantage  of  consuming 

one's,  136. 
Society  founded  upon  Cloth,  47, 


4IO 


INDEX. 


53,  57  ;  how  Society  becomes 
possible,  195;  social  Death 
and  New-Birth,  196,  214,  222, 
243  ;  as  good  as  extinct,  210. 

Solitude.     See  Silence. 

Sorrow-pangs  of  Self-deliver- 
ance, 137,  144,  146;  divine 
depths  of  Sorrow,  172;  Wor- 
ship of  Sorrow,  175. 

Space  and  Time,  the  Dream- 
Canvas  upon  which  Life  is 
imaged,  48,  58,  231,  236. 

Spartan  wisdom,  208. 

Speculative  intuition,  46.  See 
German. 

Speech,  great,  but  not  greatest, 
198. 

Sphinx-riddle,    the    Universe   a, 

115- 

Stealing,  182,  207. 

Stupidity,  blessings  of,  147. 

Style,  varieties  of,  65. 

Suicide,  151. 

Sunset,  Z^,  139. 

Swallows,  migrations  and  co- 
operative instincts  of,  86. 

Swineherd,  the,  "^t^. 

Symbols,  197  ;  wondrous  agency 
of,  199  ;  extrinsic  and  intrinsic, 
202  ;  superannuated,  205,  211. 

Tailors,  symbolic  significance  of, 
263. 

Temptations  in  the  wilderness, 
166. 

Testimonies  of  Authors,  398. 

Teufelsdrockh's  Philosophy  of 
Clothes,  5 ;  he  proposes  a 
toast,  1 2  ;  his  personal  appear- 
ance, and  silent,  deepseated 
Sansculottism,  12,  13  ;  thawed 


into  speech,  16  ;  memorable 
watch-tower  utterances,  17  ; 
alone  with  the  Stars,  19;  ex- 
tremely miscellaneous  environ- 
ment, 20  ;  plainness  of  speech, 
24 ;  universal  learning,  and 
multiplex  literary  style,  26 ; 
ambiguous-looking  morality, 
27;  one  instance  of  laughter, 
28 ;  almost  total  want  of  ar- 
rangement, 29  ;  feeling  of  the 
ludicrous,  42 ;  speculative 
Radicalism,  56;  a  singular 
Character,  67  ;  Genesis  prop- 
erly an  Exodus,  72  ;  unprece- 
dented Name,  76  ;  infantine 
experience,  79  ;  Pedagogy,  90 ; 
an  almost  Hindoo  passivity, 
91;  school-boy  jostling,  93; 
heterogeneous  University- Life, 
99  ;  fever-paroxysms  of  Doubt, 
104  ;  first  practical  knowledge 
of  the  English,  105 ;  getting 
under  way,  107 ;  ill-success, 
113;  glimpse  of  high -life,  114; 
casts  himself  on  the  Universe, 
121;  reverent  feeling  towards 
Women,  122;  frantically  in 
love,  124;  first  interview  with 
Blumine,  127;  inspired  mo- 
ments, 129;  short  of  practical 


kitchen-stuff,  i 


ideal  bliss 


and  actual  catastrophe,  134  ; 
sorrows,  and  peripatetic  sto- 
icism, 135  ;  a  parting  glimpse 
of  his  Beloved  on  her  way  to 
England,  140 ;  how  he  over- 
ran the  whole  earth,  141  ; 
Doubt  darkened  into  Unbe- 
lief, 146  ;  love  of  Truth,  148  ; 
a  feeble  unit,  amidst  a  threat- 


INDEX. 


411 


ening  Infinitude,  1 50  ;  placid 
indifference,  151;  Baphometic 
Fire-baptism,  154;  a  Hyper- 
borean intruder,  163  ;  Noth- 
ingness of  Life,  166  ;  Tempta- 
tions in  the  wilderness,  166  ; 
dawning  of  a  better  day,  169  ; 
the  Ideal  in  the  Actual,  17S; 
finds  his  true  Calling,  180  ;  his 
Biography  a  symbolic  Adum- 
bration, significant  to  those 
who  can  decipher  it,  183  ;  a 
wonder-lover,  seeker  and 
worker,  188  ;  in  Monmouth- 
Street  among  the  Hebrews, 
219;  concluding  hints,  265, 
266  ;  his  public  History  not 
yet  done,  perhaps  the  better 
part  only  beginning,  270. 

Thinking  Man,  a,  the  worst 
enemy  of  the  Prince  of  Dark- 
ness, 108,  180;  true  Thought 
can  never  die,  224. 

Time-Spirit,  life-battle  with  the, 
77,  117;  Time,  the  universal 
wonder-hider,  239. 

Titles  of  Honour,  225. 


Tools,  influence  of,  35  ;  the  Pen, 
the  most  miraculous  of  tools, 
180. 

Unbelief,  era  of,  102,  148  ;  Doubt 
darkening  into,  146 ;  escape 
from,  168. 

Universities,  99. 

Utilitarianism,  146,  212. 

View-hunting  and  diseased  Self- 
consciousness,  140. 

Voltaire,  175;  the  Parisian  Di- 
vinity, 228. 

War,  157. 

Wisdom,  59. 

Woman's  influence,  122. 

Wonder  the  basis  of  Worship, 
60  ;  region  of,  245. 

Words,  slavery  to,  47  ;  Word- 
mongering  and  Motive-grind- 
ing, 147. 

Workshop  of  Life,  180.  See 
Labour. 

Young  Men  and  Maidens,  116, 
121. 


INDEX  TO   NOTES   AND   INTRODUCTION. 


Aaron's  Rod,  361. 

absolviren,  335. 

Abt  Vogler,  382. 

accident,  279. 

Adamite,  310. 

Adam-Kadmon,  296. 

Adams,  W.  D.,  284. 

Adam's  first  task,  320. 

Addison,  310. 

adjectival  phrase,  German,  281. 

^neid,  312,  315,  326,  348,  385, 

395- 
^Esthetic  Tea,  331,  335. 
'  affectation  of  life,'  366. 
age  of  chivalry,  3S6. 
Agora,  321. 
Ahrimanism,  387. 
'  airs  from  Heaven,'  339. 
airts,  289. 
Alaric,  371. 
Alasto7%  345. 
Alexander,  354,  384. 
Alexander's  Feast,  283,  369. 
Allgemeine  Zeitung,  2S8. 
Alison,  A.,  278,  353. 
'  all  kindreds,'  353. 
all  visible  things,  315. 
Almacks,  3S7. 
Almanack,  Belfast,  294. 
Alton  Locke,  349. 
'Amicus  Plato,'  285. 
Ammon's  Temple,  336. 
Amphion,  -^^y 
Analects  from  Richter,  309. 
Anatomy  of  Drunkenness,  278. 


Anatomy  of  Melajicholy,  289,  296, 
310,  331,  362,  368,  394. 

Ajicient  Marina^-,  332. 

Ancient  Pistol,  330,  370. 

Angelo,  Michael,  365. 

Anglo-Dandiacal,  295. 

Anglo-Saxon  Church,  Antiquities 
of  293. 

Anthropometamorphosis,  305. 

Antony  and  Cleopatra,  304,  336. 

Anzeiger,  Weissnichtwd' sche,  282, 

'  Apage  Satana,'  355. 

Apollo,  radiant,  ever  young,  294. 

apparitions,  278,  290. 

appetite  of  Ravens,  392. 

aprons,  episcopal,  tucked-in,  301; 
of  paper,  301. 

Arabian  iVights,  314,  344,  381. 

Arabian  Whinstone,  394. 

Arachne,  314.  ^ 

Arbela,  384. 

Arbuthnot,  J.,  317. 

Archimedes-lever,  338. 

Aristophanes,  377. 

Aristotle's  Ethics,  345. 

Arkwright,  314. 

Armida's  Palace,  351. 

Arnauld,  320. 

Arnold,  E.,  Sir,  391. 

Arnold,  M.,  379. 

Ars  Poetica,  302,  383. 

Ashton,  T.,  348. 

Astoria,  378. 

As  You  Like  Lt,  2S9,  310,  386. 

Athos  Monks,  387. 


414 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION 


Attorney  Logic,  315. 

Augustine,  346,  383. 

Auscultator,  330. 

Alls  Meinen  Lcboi,  284,  311,  357. 

Alls  Spanic'n,  280. 

Austin,  Mrs.,  282. 

Aylmcy's  Field,  322. 

Bannerman,  Sir  R.,  xxxi. 

banyan-grove,  297. 

Baphonietic  Baptism,  351. 

Bardili,  286. 

Barendz,  356. 

Basilisk-glance,  344. 

Bauernkrieg,  369. 

Bazard-Enfantin,  396. 

beards  singed,  374. 

Beattie,  J.,  327. 

beast-godhood,  y]"]. 

Bede,  290. 

bed  of  justice,  312. 

benefit  of  clergy,  312. 

Bentham,  J.,  385. 

Berkleyan  idea,  290. 

Bernard,  J.,  392. 

'  beyond     plummet's     sounding,' 

384- 
Birds,  Domestic  Habits  of,  346. 
Birrell,  A.,  Ix,  385. 
Black2uood''s  Magazine,  393. 
blood,  310. 
Blumine,  an  ideal  picture,  xxxv. 

beauty  of  character,  xxxv. 

Froude's  opinion,  xxx. 

her  name,  336. 

Mrs.       Mercer's       opinion, 

xxxiii. 
Mrs.     Strachey's      opinion, 

xxxiii. 

prototype  of,  xxix. 

'  bodying  forth,'  289. 
Boileau,  305. 
Bolivar's  Cavalry,  306. 
Book  of  Days,  355. 


Boswell,  281,  284,  375,  383,  386. 

Brahminical  feeling,  391. 

bricks  without  straw,  t,t,;^. 

Brimley,  G.,  388. 

British  Literature,  glory  of,  283. 

British  Readers  —  invective,  396. 

Browne,  Sir  T.,  305,  344,  374. 

Browning,  R.,  282,  283,  382. 

Buchan-1  killers,  393. 

Buchmann,  288,  338,  367. 

buck,  310. 

Budget  of  Paradoxes,  275,  369. 

Burger,  T,yj,  383. 

bull,  Luther  burning,  379. 

Buller,  C,  xiv,  328. 

Bullers,  Carlyle  tutor  to,  xiv. 

Bulwer,  392. 

Buridan's  Ass,  368. 

burin,  292. 

Burke,  386. 

Burroughs,  J.,  351. 

Burton,  R.,   289,   296,   310,   331, 

362,  368,  394. 
Biisching's  Geography,  318. 
Byron,  346,  372,  27^. 

Caaba,  394. 

cabalistico-sartorial,  296. 
Cabanis,  279. 
Cadmus,  378. 
Caesar,  324. 

Gallic  War,  391. 

Cain,  346. 
calenture,  341. 
Callot,  302. 
Calypso-Island,  334. 
camisade  of  Hochkirch,  318. 
Campus  Martius,  321. 
cant,  Ixii,  284. 
Cardan,  275. 

Catholic  Dictiojiary,  314,  376. 
Carlyle  against  Hume,  381. 
Carlyle  and  the  Rose-goddess,  328, 
332. 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


415 


Carlyle  and  the    Open  Secret  of 

His  life,  xxi  n,  376. 
Carlyle,  at  Craigenputtock,  xiii. 
student     of     German,     xv, 

xxxvi. 

style,  humorous  deprecia- 
tion of,  xliii,  xliv. 

transplanter  of   German 

thought,  Ixviii. 

use   of   his    material,   xxii, 

xxiii. 

Carlyle's  Correspondence  with 
Emerson,    316. 

Correspondence  with  Goethe, 

275,  276,  277,  280,  282,  284, 
289,  316,  326,  367,  395,  396. 

Chartism,  372. 

devices  to  make  his  mean- 
ing clear,  xl. 

Early  Letters,  275,  276,  277, 

286,  289,  294,  295,  309,  327, 
328,  330,  345,  349.  375'  379. 
390 ;  specimen  of  style  in,  xlvii. 

Early   Life   (Froude),   278, 

282,   286,    289,   295,    297,   300, 

301.  305'  306,  309.  3"'  312, 
313,  314,  315,  316,  320,  322, 
323,  324,  325,  326,  328,  329, 
33O'  33i»  -hZZ^  344,  346,  347, 
348,  349,  350,  35^,  355,  356, 
357,  359,  360,  362,  366,  367, 
374,  375,  379,  380,  381,  383, 
384,  390,  395,  396,  397. 

early  married  life,  xvii. 

Essays,  275,  276,  277,  278, 

279,  284,  286,    294,    297,  298, 

302,  306,  307,  309,  313,  315, 
317,  322,  326,  328,  329,  330, 
33*,  333,  334,  336,  343,  344, 
346,  347,  350,  351,  352,  354, 
355,  357,  358,  359,  362,  363, 
364,  366,  367,  368,  yjz,  375, 
Zl^.  377,  378,  380,  381,  382, 
384,  393,  395- 


Carlyle's  Frederick  the  Great,  319, 
366. 

French  Revolution,  2S8,  291, 

366,  369. 

horsemanship,  309. 

influence,  Ixx,  Ixxi. 

fournal,  xvii,  297,  298,  301, 

305,  309,  311,  313,  314,  315, 
316,  322,  323,  326,  330,  346, 
348,  349,  350,  355,  357,  359, 
362,  Z^7,  374,  379,  380,  381, 
Z^Z^   384,   394- 

Last  Words,  318. 

Letters,  2-]^,  280,   282,   283, 

287,  290,  295,  300,  323,  347, 
351,   356,   357,   362,  .366. 

Life   in    London   (Froude), 

280,  306,  323,  345. 

Life  of  Schiller,   310,    348, 

353,  355,  373,  384- 

method  of  quoting,  311. 

Reminiscences,  276,  292,  295, 

300,   309,    317,  323,   327,   328, 


329,  33I'  zzz^  339,  349, 


?6o, 


361,  362. 

self-praise,  xl,  283,  293. 

Translations,  280,  287,  288, 

297,  298,  301,  306,  311,  312, 
313,  317,  318,  319,  320,  330, 
340,   345,   347,    348,   356,   375. 

youth,  xiii. 

carriages,  top-laden,  290. 

'carried  of  the  Spirit,'  355. 

'  Carrie  re  ouverte,'  354. 

Cassini,  Jacques,  294. 

Castle  of  Indoleiice,  327. 

Castorologia,  378. 

Cato,  quoted,  310. 

celestial  bed,  347. 

'  Centre  of  Indifference,'  Ixvi. 

Centnry  Dictiojtary,  281,  351,  392. 

'  chalk,  marked  with,'  283. 

Chalmers,  317. 

'  champion  of  England,'  370. 


41 6      INDEX    TO   NOTES   AND   INTRODUCTION 


'chaos  were  come,'  312. 

chemical  mixture,  284. 

'  chief  of  sinners,'  347. 

Childe  Harold,  372. 

childish  sports,  322. 

China  and  the   Chinese   (Davis), 

2S6. 
China,  Ti-avels  in  (IJorrovv),  286. 
Chronicle  of  the  Drum,  352. 
Chrysalis,  362. 
Chrysostom,  313. 
Cicero,  306,  318,  361. 
Cid,  318. 
Cincinnatus,  318. 
City  of  God,  t^t^. 
Classical  Disquisitions,   281,  310. 
Cleopatra,  304. 
Clotha,  3S6. 

'  clothes,  cast,  reverence  for,'  375. 
Code  Napoleon,  361. 
codification,  385. 
'  Cogito  ergo  sum,'  307, 
Coleridge,  Ixiii. 
Cofnus,  321. 

Confession  of  Faith,  388. 
conflux  of  eternities,  313. 
'  confusion  worse  conf  ounded,'292. 
Congreve  rocket,  335. 
Contrat  Social,  D21,  278. 
Conway,  M.,  350,  357,  365. 
cooking  animal,  299. 
Costtnne  in  England,  305,  310. 
Cotton,  Sir  R.,  385. 
Connt  Fathom,  429. 
'  Courage  then,'  381. 
couriers,  290. 
courtesy  to  all,  374. 
courtier  and  the  bran,  305. 
Coutumes,  Costumes,  295. 
Cousin,  v.,  279. 
Cowper,  The  Task,  290,  362. 
cows'  jackets,  309. 
Creasy,  E.  S.,  345,  384. 
creek,  the  world,  382. 


crepiren,  327. 

Cudworth,  291,  320,  377. 

Curiosities  of  Literature,  310,  385. 

Curragh,  the,  371. 

custom,  Ixiii,  382. 

cygnet  or  gosling,  331. 

cynic's  tub,  365. 

Dalai-Lama,  292. 

D'Alembert,  365. 

dance  of  the  dead,  -^t^. 

dandiacal  household,  392. 

Darnley,  305. 

*  dashes  his  sponge,'  395. 

D'Aubigne,  379,  382. 

Day  and  Martin,  366. 

'  Dead  and  Unborn,'  379. 

Dechanel,  361. 

De  Civitate  Dei,  383. 

decoration,  297. 

Dekker,  344,  374. 

De  U Esprit,  306,  321. 

Delphic  avenue,  377. 

De  Morgan,  A.,  275,  369. 

De  Quincey,  308,  338. 

Descartes,  307. 

Desdemona,  318. 

Deserted  Village,  The,  321. 

devil,  319. 

devil  dead,  349. 

dew  on  grass,  338. 

Dictionary  of  Commerce,  333. 

Dilettante,  315. 

'diluted  madness,'  362. 

Dio  Chrysostom,  395. 

Diodorus,  336,  391. 

Diogenes  and  decency,  365. 

Diogenes  Laertius,  291,  349,  358, 

36s,  3Si- 
Dionysius'  Ear,  376. 
Directorium  Anglicanum,  301. 
Disowned,  The,  392. 
D'Israeli,  310,  385. 
dissevered  limb,  355. 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


417 


divine  idea,  364. 
doctor's  head,  314. 
Doctor  utriusque  Juris,  374. 
documents,  requisite,  284. 
doleful  creatures,  358. 
Donatus,  373. 
Don   Carlos,  373. 
Don  Quixote,  285. 
doubloons,  bag  of,  293. 
doubt,  360. 
Downing  Street,  351. 
drab,  scarlet,  significance  of,  295. 
dream-grotto,  307. 
Drtiminond,    Jonson's    Conversa- 
tions with,  305. 
Duddon,  Sonjiets  to  the  River,  324. 
Duenna  Cousin,  339. 
'  Du  Himmel,'  343. 
Dumdrudge,  352. 
dumpling,  cooking  of  a,  277. 
Dtinciad,  331. 
D'Urfey,  T.,  2S7. 
dust,  element  of,  291. 
Dutch  Republic,  Rise  of,  367,  369. 
duty  nearest,  360. 
Duty  of  man,  360. 
Dying  Szvan,  The,  379. 

eagle  renewing  beak,  346. 
Early  Kings  of  Persia,  300. 
'earth's  mountains,'  384. 
earth,  too  crowded,  371. 
eating  one's  heart,  349. 
Ecce  Homo,  361. 
Eden  Bower,  296. 
Edersheim,  393. 
egg  of  Eros,  377. 
El  Dorado,  336. 
electric  machines,  393. 
Elysian  brightness,  315. 
Emancipation,  Catholic,  280. 
Emerson,  317. 
enchanter's  familiar,  329. 
end  of  man,  an  action,  345. 


'endure  the  shame,'  347. 
English  in  Ireland,  390. 
English  People,  Short  History  of, 

277. 
Entepfuhl,  318. 
Epictetus,  345. 
Erasmus,  285. 
Ernulphus-cursings,  351. 
Erostratus,  305. 
Erskine,  Rev.  R.,  287. 
'  Es  leuchtet  mir  ein,'  358. 
Esprit  des  Lois,  295. 
Essay  on  Criticism,  302. 
Essay  on  Man,  307,  317. 
Essay  on  TrutJi,  327. 
Estrapades,  345. 
Everlasting  No,  Ixv,  350. 
Everlasting    No,    suggestion    of, 

346. 
Everlasting  Yea,  Ixvii. 
Ewigkeit,  290. 
Ew.  Wohlgeboren,  395. 
Examen  Rigorosum,  330. 
Expedition  to  Orinoco,  306. 

Faerie  Q^ieen,  291,  352. 
Fairholt,  F.  W.,  287,  305,  310. 
Family  Library,  283. 
Fancy-Bazaar,  366. 
fantastic  tricks,  368. 
fat  things,  348. 
fat  oxen,  281. 
Faust,  306,  309,  311,  330,  350. 

Walpurgisnacht,  296. 

Faust's  Death-song,  350. 

Mantle,  306. 

Faustus,  Doctor,  340. 

'feast  of  shells,'  359. 

ferment,  air,  356. 

Fifteen    Decisive   Battles    of   the 

World,  384. 
finance,  gold-mines  of,  281. 
fire-balls,  387. 
first  love,  infinite,  335. 


41 8      INDEX    TO   AZOTES  AND   INTKODUCT/ON. 


'  Fit  for  treasons,'  295. 
Fitzpatrick,  Miss,  xxxi ;  Carlyle's 

description  of  her,  xxxii ;   Was 

she  lUumine  ?  xxxiii ;  her  own 

statement,  xxxiii. 
Fo?u?n,  The,  275. 
forum,  descend,  286. 
Fortunatus'  Hat,  344. 
Eoiirc  Birdcs  of  Noah's  Ark,  374. 
Fox,  George,  363 ;  drinking  beer, 

364  ;    in    a   hollow    tree,   365  ; 

leathern    suit,    365 ;  Journals, 

364,  365- 
'fractional  parts  of  a  man,'  393. 
Frankfort  Coronations,  311. 
Franklin '  snatched  the  Thunder,' 

394- 
Eraser's  Magazine,  278,  283,  397. 
Frederic  the  Great,  318. 
Freiligrath,  280. 
Erench  Revolution,  288,  291,  366, 

369- 
frenzy,  fine,  377. 
Friedrich  d'or,  319. 
'  Frisch  zu,  Bruder,'  329. 
'from  God,'  3S4. 
'from  such  meditations,'  342. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  390  ;    opinion   of 

Blumine,  xxx. 

Gallia  Braccata,  297. 

game-preservers,  321. 

Gao,  299. 

Garnett,  R.,  xiii,  Ix,  293,  368,  375. 

Gates,  L.  E.,  278. 

Geeza,  Sacchara,  352. 

Geisterseher,  348. 

genii  enfranchised,  341. 

genius,  336. 

Georgics,  393. 

'geometric  scale,'  28 1. 

Germania,  390. 

Gerund-grinder,  326. 

'  getrosten  Muthes,'  366. 


ghosts,  384. 

Gibbon,  300,  371,  387,  394. 

Gibeonites,  366. 

Gil  Bias,  293. 

Gilpin,  J.,  278. 

glass-bell,      largest     imaginable, 

Gniidige  Frau,  332. 

Gneschpn,  320. 

'  Gnostic  shape,'  3S6. 

Godwin,  W.,  369. 

Goethe,  275,  288,  311,  315,  323, 

330>  334,  336,   342,  346,   34S, 

349'  354,  358,  380,  394- 
Goethe,  Characteristics  of,  282. 
Goethe,  prophet,  380. 
gold-vapour,  374. 
Golgotha,  349. 
Goliath,  354. 
goose-hunting,  281. 
Gordon,  Margaret,  xxx. 
Gott,  Gemilth  u.  Welt,  330,  334. 
Graham,  Dr.  James,  347. 
'grass  grow,  hear  the,'  377. 
'greater  than  Zeno,'  35S. 
Green,  J.  R.,  277. 
grenadier  Sergeant,  318. 
Grejizen  der  Jlfenschheit,  323. 
Gretna  Green,  291. 
Grimm,  345. 
Grtinen  Gans,  287. 
Grundriss  der  ersten  Logik,  286. 
Guidance,  Freedom,  Immortality, 

371- 
Guides  to  English  Thought,  Alod- 

ern,  289. 
Gukguk,  287. 
Gulliver's  Travels,  329. 
gunpowder,  invention  of,  298. 
Gutzlaff,  Rev.  Charles,  353. 

Hadjee,  344. 
Hadrian,  353. 
haggis,  395. 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


419 


Hallanshakers,  390. 
Hamburg  Merchant,  3x6. 
Hamlet,  326,  339,  351,  373,  374, 

382,  Z^Z- 

handwriting  on  the  wall,  348. 

Hannibal-like,  395. 

happiness,  348. 

a  whim,  357. 

Hapsburg  Regalia,  319. 

Harris,  J.,  works  of,  395. 

Harrison,  F.,  Ix. 

'  haste  stormfully,'  384. 

hatred,  y]-]. 

Haupt  und  Staats-Action,  311. 

Hebron,  317. 

Hegel,  286. 

Ile'mrich  v.  Ofterdingen,  342,  366. 

Hell-gate  Bridge,  362. 

Helvetius,  321  ;  quoted,  306. 

Hengst  and  Horsa,  290. 

Henry  the  Fifth,  370. 

Henry  the  Fourth,  312,  371. 

Henry  the  Sixth,  386. 

Henry  the  Fowler,  326. 

Hercules,  choice  of,  361. 

Heretic's  Tragedy,  The,  282. 

Herodotus,  327,  336,  378. 

Heroes  a?td  Hero-  Worship,  353, 
354>  379.  380,  3S2. 

hero-worship,  380. 

herring-busses,  333. 

Herrings,  Annual  Passage  of,  2"]%. 

Herring,  Migrations  of  the,  278. 

Hertha,  390. 

Hesiod,  332,  348. 

Hesperics,  395. 

Heuschrecke,  2S3  ;  like  Bosvvell, 
292. 

Hibbert,  S.,  278. 

'  hie  jacet,'  T^^y 

Hinterschlag,  324. 

Hippisley,  G.,  306. 

hodman  and  architect  of  teach- 
ing, 326. 


Horet  ihr  Herrefi,  280. 

Holbein'' s  Dance  of  Death,  383. 

Holy  Alliance,  332. 

Homer  nods,  302. 

Hoole's  Orlando  Furioso,  307. 

hope,  man  based  on,  346. 

Horace,  283,  285,  302,   311,  352, 

383- 
Horngate,  3S5. 
Horn  of  Plenty,  331. 
Howard's  Cyclopicdia,  341,  387. 
Hue,  Abbe,  292. 
Hndibras,  281,  332. 
Hugo  of  Trimberg,  354. 
Humboldt,  299. 
Hume,  381. 

Humphrey  Clinker,  29S,  395. 
hungry  young,  327. 
Hutton,  J.,  276. 
Hutton,  R.  H.,  289. 
Huxley,  Ixi. 

'Ideologist,'  353. 

//  Penseroso,  292,  366. 

Imaginary  Co?iversations,  336. 

'imagination  of  meat,'  327. 

'  immortal  by  a  kiss,'  340. 

'infant  mewling,'  310. 

Infernal  Chase,  345. 

Iti  Memoriam,  303,  320,  350,  351. 

in  petto,  288. 

Inquiry  Concerning  the  Hon  an 

Ufiderstajidifig,  38 1 . 
Intellectual   System    (Cudworth), 

291,  320,  377. 
interior  parts,  329. 
'  in  the  dry  tree,'  380. 
Ifitimations  of  Immortality,  319, 

321. 
invisibility,  transit  out  of,  318. 
'  I  remained  alone,'  343. 
iron  swim,  381. 
Irving,  E.,  friendship  with   Car- 

lyle,  xiv. 


42 o       INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


Irving's  engagement,  xv. 

I  sis,  287. 

'  It  is  the  Night,'  395. 

Jenner,  344. 

/erusalon  Dclivet'cd,  352. 

/esus  the  Messiah,  Life  and  Times 

oL  393- 
Joan  and  My  Lady,  312. 
Job,  argument  from,  38 1. 
Job's-news,  372. 
Johnson  and  ghosts,  3S3. 
Johnson's  bow,  375. 
Joseph  the  Second,  369. 
Joshua,  324. 
journalists,  301. 
Justinian,  361. 
Juvenal,  354. 
Kaiser  tind  de7'  Abt,  377. 
Kellogg,  S.  H.,  391. 
Kenihvoyth,  304. 
Kepler,  379. 
Kilmarnock,  297. 
king,  etymology  of,  379. 
kingdoms  of  death,  326. 
kings  sweated  down,  353. 
Kl eider,  Die,  28 2. 
'  Know  thyself,'  349. 
Knox's  daughter,  300. 
Koran,  293. 
Kuhbach,  321. 
Kunersdorf,  318. 
Lady  Ilai/iiltou  and  Lord  Nelson, 

347- 
Lagrange,  275. 
Laissez-faire,  372. 
Lamb,  C,  394. 
Lamb,  armer  Teufel,  315. 
Landor,  336. 
Lang,  Andrew,  293. 
Language,  Philosophies  of,  278. 
Laplace,  276. 
Larkin,  IL,  xxi,  376. 
Laughing  Animal,  298. 


Lawrence,  Sir  W.  279. 

Lear,  285,  310. 

learned,  282. 

Lecky,  Ix. 

legislature,  make  rich,  357. 

Leibnitz,  335. 

Leiden  des  Jtmgen  IVerther,  23S' 

Lempriere,    297,    305,    326,   365, 

Leonore,  383. 

Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,  385. 

Liln-ary  of  the  Fathers,  346. 

Library  of  Useful  Knowledge,  295. 

Lies,  Prince  of,  28  5. 

'  life  for  a  living  man,'  331. 

life,  fraction  of,  357. 

Life    of  Schiller,   310,   348,   353, 

_  355;  373.  384- 
life,  simple  and  complex,  332. 

vanity  of,  329. 

Light  of  Asia,  The,  391. 

Light  of  Asia  attd  the  Light  of 

the  World,  The,  391. 
light-sparkles,  309. 
'  like  a  wheel,'  341. 
Like  and  Unlike,  334. 
Lilis,  296. 
limboes,  307. 
Lingard,  293. 
Lingua-franca,  387. 
liquors,  intoxicating,  278. 
Littre,  288,  295,  395. 
'lives,  moves,'  279. 
Livy,  306,  314,  395. 
logbooks,  our  nautical,  276. 
logic-chopper,  314. 
London,  A  Survey  of,  317. 
London,  a  Wen,  375. 
'  look  before  and  after,'  279. 
Loretto,  365. 
Lothario,  360. 
'  Love  not  Pleasure,'  358. 
Lovers  Labours  Lost,  312,  364. 
Lover's  Leap,  344. 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


42 


Lowell,  on    Richter's    influence, 

xlvi. 
Lubberland,  348. 
Lucretius,  326,  336. 
Luther's  inkstand,  382. 
Lycidas,  327,  387. 
Lycurgus,  361. 

Macaronic  verses,  386. 

Macaulay,  292,  318. 

Macbeth,  331,  336. 

Mac  Use    Portrait    Gallery,     The, 

279,  284,  299. 
Macnisli,  R.,  278. 
madness,  method  in,  351. 
Magendie,  F.,  279. 
Maggiore,  322. 
Magna  Charta,  385. 
Mahmoud,  345. 
Malade  imaginaire,  Le,  386. 
Malkin,  B.  H.,  281,  310. 
Malthus,  292,  370. 
Malzleins,  345. 
man  clothed  with  Authority,  315; 

with  a  Body,  316  ;  with  Beauty, 

316. 
man,  heap  of  Glass,  368. 

'  still  man,'  396. 

Manfred,  356. 

Manicheism,  386. 

mankind  sailing  in  fleets,  333. 

'many  shall  run,'  281. 

Marchfeld,  352. 

Alar i a  Stuart,  310. 

Marlowe,  340. 

Alajy    Queen    of   Scots,    life    of 

(Chalmer's),  305. 
Marseillese  Hymns,  369. 
Martyrs  of  Science,  379. 
Massinger,  362. 
Maud,  372. 
Maximen  u.  Reflexionen,  275,  315. 

349,  354- 
Measure  for  Measure,  315,  368. 


Mechanics  Institute,  314. 

'  Mein  Vei'fndchtniss  zvie  herrlich,^ 

275- 
Melchizedek,  288. 
Melechsala,  301,  347, 
Memnon's  statue,  339. 
men  alike  tall,  354. 
Mephistopheles,  294. 
Mercer,  Mrs.,  opinion  of  Blumine, 

xxxiii. 
Merchant  of  Venice,  295,  379. 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  330. 
Messias  of  Nature,  368. 
metaphors,  316. 
Meyrick,  Sir  Samuel,  303. 
Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  289, 

377- 
Migne,  346. 
Mignet,  354. 
Milo,  305. 
Milton,  292,  312,  313,  315,   327, 

345.  348,  356,  362,  366,  Z^l- 
Minerva,  294. 
miraculous,  the,  383. 
Mirza's  Hill,  y]"]. 
Miserere,  381. 
'  mistress'  eyebrow,'  386. 
Modest  Proposal,  A,  371. 
"  Mdchte  es  gedeihen,^  283. 
Mohler,  386. 

Mohammedan  reverence,  388. 
Moloch,  393. 
Monastery,  The,  282. 
money-changers,  377. 
Monmouth  st.,  375. 
Montesquieu,  295. 
Montgolfier,  340. 
Moore,  T.,  390. 
'  more  in  sorrow,'  374. 
'  more  meant  than  meets  the  ear,' 

366. 
Morley,  John,  295,  380. 
'  morning  stars  sing,'  381. 
'  mortal  coil,'  y]i^. 


422 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION 


motive  millwrights,  368. 

iMotley,  J.  L.,  367,  369. 

Moscow,  307. 

mountain,  down-rushing,  320. 

mountains,  341. 

Much  Ado,  323. 

Miiller,  F.  v.,  282. 

M  umbo- J  umbo,  370. 

Mutiny^     RaninisceJices     of    the 

Great,  342. 
Aly  Oivn  Times,  History  of,  317. 

Napoleon     Biionaparte,     Life    of 

(Scott),  361. 
National  Library,  2S3. 
*  Natural  Enemies,'  352. 
Natural  Supernaturalism,  381. 
Nature's  virtue,  369. 
'  Navibus    (infandum  !)    amissis,' 

312. 
Nazarene,  387. 
Neander,  386,  387. 
Nebuchadnezzar's  furnace,  350. 
necessity,  ring  of,  322. 
Nepenthe,  321. 
Nero  fiddling,  347. 
Netherland  Gueux,  369. 
Newton,  378,  379. 
Nibelung  hoard,  297. 
Nichol,  T.,  Thomas  Carlyle,  xiii  n, 

Ix,  325,  350,  357. 
Nifl  and  Muspel,  296. 
Night,  reign  of,  291, 
nights  and  suppers,  285. 
Night-Thoughts,  291. 
Night-thoughts,  291,  330. 
Nineteenth  Centicry,  332,  390. 
Noble  Mansion,  335. 
'  no  cheating,'  286. 
Noctes  Ambrosianae,  279,  283,  393, 

397- 
no  mystery,  314. 
Northern  Mythology,  296. 
Northwest  Passage,  -T^^^y 


Notes  and  Qiieries,  285. 

Nose-of-Wax,  362. 

Not-Me,  351. 

Novalis,  342,  359,  366,  368,  371, 

374- 
Niirnberg  man,  326. 

Obiter  Dicta,  Ix,  385. 

Odyssey  (Butcher  and  Lang),  321. 

(Pope),  334. 

Oken,  286. 

Old  Adam,  355. 

Old-Clothes  Jewry,  317. 

Old  Fortunattcs,  344. 

Old  Mortality,  379. 

Oliver  Yorke,  284. 

'  one  and  indivisible,'  309. 

'  one  thing  needful,'  347. 

Open  sesame,  381. 

Ophiuchus,  356. 

opossums,  pouch,  312. 

Orbis  pictus,  296. 

Orinoco  Indians,  299. 

Orinoco  and  Apiire,  Expedition  to, 

306. 
Orlando  Ftirioso,  307. 
Ormuz,  322. 
Othello,  312,  318,  335- 
Ottoman    Turks,   History  of  the, 

345- 
Ovid,  331,  336. 
'  outwatch  the  Bear,'  292. 
Oxenstiern,  291. 

P.P.  Clerk  of  this  Parish,  317. 
Pagoda,  sacred,  375. 
Palais  Bourbon,  351. 
Pancirolli     Reriini     Mirabilinm 

Libri  Duo,  298. 
Pandemonian  lava,  315. 
Paper  Bags,  317. 
Papin's  Digester,  361. 
Paracelszis,  283. 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION 


423 


Paradise  lost,  291,  292,  312,  313, 
315.  Z^l^  334,  ZZ^^  345'  348, 
356,  362. 

Paris  and  Voltaire,  380. 

Park,  Mungo,  370. 

'  passes  by,'  3S6. 

Paul  and  Seneca,  382. 

Paullini,  C.  F.,  303. 

Paul  Pry,  291. 

Pawaw,  370. 

'pay  the  piper,'  352. 

peace,  blessings  of,  372. 

Peace  Society,  380. 

pearl  diver,  toughest,  283. 

Pecunia,  298. 

Peep-o'-Day  Boys,  390. 

Pelhain,  388,  390 ;  contrast  to 
Sartor,  xxxv. 

Pelion  on  Ossa,  393. 

perfectibility,  363. 

Peterloo,  363. 

Petrarchan  and  Werterean  ware, 

335- 
Philip  the  Second,  369. 
Philistine,  337. 
Phillips,  Mrs.  (Miss  Kirkpatrick), 

xxxiii. 
Philoctctes,  345. 

Philosophie  der  Geschichte,  278. 
Philosophie  der  Sprache,  278. 
philosopher  in  the  middle,  313. 
Philosophy,  Spirit  of  Modern,  286, 

359- 
Phoenix,  373. 
Pickleherring,  311. 
Pierre-Pertuis,  385. 
Pilgerstab,  341. 
Pilgrim'' s  Progress,  317,  365. 
Pillar  of  Cloud,  348. 
Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy,  287. 
Pindar,  Peter,  Works  of,  277. 
pineal  gland,  313. 
pinnacle,  289. 
Piozzi,  375. 


Pisgah,  317. 

Pistol,  Ancient,  330,  370. 

Pitt  diamond,  319. 

'  Place  of  Hope,'  347. 

Plato,  307. 

plenary  inspiration,  358. 

Pliny,  297,  339. 

Plutarch,  306,  321,  336,  33S,  361, 

371- 
Pontiff,  317. 
Pope,   285,    302,   307,    317,    331, 

334,   347- 
Pope  Pius,  353. 
Pope's  Odyssey,  334. 

tiara,  376. 

Popinjay,  379. 

population,  repression  of,  370. 

Potatoes-and-Point,  391. 

potheen,  391. 

pottery,  278. 

Potvvallopers,  392. 

Praeterita,  282. 

present  God,  369. 

pre-established  harmony,  335. 

Prince  Edward  Island,  Lady  Ban- 

nerman  in,  xxxi. 
Princess,  The,  334. 
Principia  Philosophiae,  307. 
printing,  invention  of,  297. 
'  Prison  called  Life,'  376. 
'  private  Oratories,'  390. 
Program,  288. 

Progress  of  the  Species,  327. 
Profit-and-Loss  Philosophy,  347. 
Prornctheics  (Goethe),  348. 
Prometheus  Unbound,  348. 
Prometheus  Vinctus,  347. 
property,  279. 

property  in  our  bodies,  361. 
prose,     eighteenth    century,    the 

norm,    1  ;    later   developments 

of,  li. 
proselytising,  283. 
Prospero's  Island,  322. 


424 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


Pseiidodoxia  Epidcfnica,  288,  305, 

344,  374- 
public  gullible,  327. 
puffery,  285. 
Pyrrhus,  33S. 

Quakers,  History  of  (SeweH),  365. 
Quakers,  Histoire  des  (Voltaire), 

364- 
Quangfoutchee,  387. 
Queen  Elizabeth,  red  nose,  304. 
Qiihitus   Fixlein,   287,   297,    29S, 

301,   317,    318,   320,   340,   343, 

375- 
quotient,  a  net,  307. 

Rabenstein,  291. 

radish,  a  forked,  312. 

Raleigh's  mantle,  304. 

Ramsay,  Allan,  331. 

'  ravelled  sleeve,'  380. 

Reade,  Charles,  345. 

reading,  by  nature,  323. 

'  real  Being,  382. 

reason,  feast  of,  285. 

Reflections  on  the  Frejich  Revolu- 
tion, 386. 

Relatio  ex  Actis,  336. 

religion  of  young  hearts,  339. 

Remijiiscences,  300,  309,  317,  323, 
324,  327,  328,  329,  331,  333, 
339.   346,   349,   360,   361,   362. 

Reminiscences  of  the  Great  Aliit- 
iny,  342. 

renommiren,  328. 

Roiommist,  Der,  328. 

renunciation,  357. 

Rent,  Doctrine  of,  278. 

RetrospectioJis  of  the  Stage,  392. 

reverberating  furnace,  335. 

Rhizophages,  391. 

Ribbonmen,  390. 

Richter,  Jean  Paul,  294,  395 ;  in- 
fluence on  Carlyle's  style,  xliii ; 


resemblance  in  style  to  Carlyle, 

xlv  ;  Carlyle's  own  statement. 

xlvii;  difference  from  Carlyle, 

xlix. 
Rights  of  Man,  325. 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  367 

369- 
Ritual  Reason  Why,  The,  Tpi. 
River  Duddon,  324. 
Rock,  Memoirs  of  Captain,  390. 
Rockites,  390. 
Roman  geese,  314. 
Rosa,  Salvator,  365. 
Ross,  Capt.  John,  1^^-}^. 
Rossbach,  318. 
rosy-fingered,  374. 
Rousseau,  278,  363,  374. 
Rossetti,  D.  G.,  296. 
Royal  Cyclopa:dia,Hozi>ard^s  New, 

341,  Z^l- 

Royal  drawing-rooms,  311. 

Royal  Society,  277. 

Royce,  J.,  286,  359. 

Royer-Collard,  P.  P.,  279. 

Roundabout  Papers,  376. 

Rue  St.  Thomas  de  L'Enfer,  Ixvi, 

350- 
'  rugged     all-nourishing      Earth,' 

'    345- 

Ruskin,  J.,  282,  383. 

rush-lights  kindled,  275. 

Sachs,  Hans,  348,  394. 

'  sadder,  wiser  man.'  332. 

sailor  of  the  air,  310. 

saints,  communion  of,  379. 

Saint-Simonian,  396. 

Saint  Simon,  Doctrine  de,  373. 

CEuvres    Choisies   de, 

ZIZ- 
Saint  Simon's  aphorism,  373. 
Salamanca  University,  327. 
Samson's  riddle,  297. 
Sanchoniathon,  293. 


INDEX   TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


425 


Sans-culottism,  288. 

Sartor  Resartus^  origin  of  title, 
284  ;  an  autobiography,  xxiii ; 
a  literary  hoax,  xli ;  a  modern 
Pilgrim'' s  Progress,  Ixiv  ;  appar- 
ent confusion  of  plan,  xxxviii, 
295  ;  reason  for,  xxxviii,  xxxix  ; 
appreciations  by,  Brrrell,  Ix ; 
Garnett,  Ix  ;  Harrison,  F.,  Ix ; 
Huxley,  Ixi ;  Lecky,  Ix  ;  Nichol, 
Ix ;  Tyndall,  Ixi ;  character  of 
Book  Two,  xxix ;  essential 
teaching,  Ixii,  Ixvii,  Ixviii  ;  facts 
of  publication,  xix  ;  germ  of, 
xvii ;  German  coloring  of, 
xxxvii,  xliv ;  obligations  of,  to 
Germans,  xxii;  general  charac- 
ter of,  xxviii ;  growth  of,  xviii ; 
Larkin's  explanation  of,  xxi ; 
public  befooled  by,  xli ;  skep- 
ticism of,  Ixix  ;  sources  of,  xxii ; 
stages  of  growth,  xxxix  ;  style, 
opinions  of,  Taine,  xlii ;  Tho- 
reau,  xlv  ;  Scherer,  xliii ;  fore- 
shadowed in  E.  Lett.,  xlvii, 
xlviii ;  effect  of  the  speaking 
voice,  li ;  richly  allusive,  lii ; 
picturesquely  concrete,  liii,  liv, 
Iv  ;  quality  of  humor,  Iv,  Ivi ; 
use  of  triad,  Ivi  ;  of  compound 
words,  Iviii;  of  alliteration, Iviii ; 
trick  of  quoting,  Iviii ;  to  be 
classed  as  prose  poetry,  lix,  Ix. 

sartorius,  394. 

Satanic  School,  341. 

Sataii's  Invisible  World,  302. 

Saturn's  children,  332. 

'scent  of  the  morning  air,'  383. 

Schiller,  310,  322,  373,  384. 

Schlegel,  A.,  278. 

Schlegel,  F.,  278. 

Schlosskirche,  290. 

Schmelzle^s  Journey,  312,  313, 
356. 


Schonbrunn,  351. 

Schreckhorn,  356. 

Science,  Torch  of,  275. 

Scotch  Proverbs,  Collection  <yi  33 1  • 

Scottish  Brassmith's  Idea,  329. 

scrannel-piping,  387. 

Seal-emblem,  367. 

Secret  Societies,  338. 

Self,  Annihilation  of,  355. 

Self  help,  314. 

Serbonian  Bog,  312. 

Serpent-of-Eternity,  362. 

Sesame  and  Lilies,  383. 

'  Seven  distinct  Articles,'  388. 

seven  sleepers,  294. 

Sewell,    History  of  the    Quakers, 

365. 
Shaster,  293. 
Shandy,  Walter,  319. 
Shea,  D.,  300. 
Shelley,  279,  345. 
Siamese  Twins,  386. 
Siam,  King  of,  381. 
'  sic  itur,'  395. 
'  sic  vos  non  vobis,'  273- 
Siecle  du  Louis  XV.,  348. 
Signs  of  the  Times,  302,  313. 
silence,  Ixii,  289  ;  altars  to,  367. 
silent  fury,  329. 
Simrock,  K.,  280,  297. 
sixth  sense,  320. 
'  skills  not,'  386. 
Skylark,  The,  279. 
Slavonic,  390. 
Sleep,  Philosophy  of,  2j?>. 
Smiles,  S.,  314. 
Smith,  Sidney,  322. 
'smoky  cribs,'  371. 
Smollett,  429. 
Social  Contract,  278. 
'solid  pudding,  praise,'  331. 
Solon,  361. 
Son  of  Time,  330. 
Sophocles,  345. 


42  6       INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


sorrow,  sanctuary  of,  Ixvi,  356. 

soul  probed,  279. 

soul,  stomach,  329. 

Space  and  Time,  308. 

Spanish  Litcrattcre,  History  of, 
318. 

sparrow  fed,  345. 

Spartan  broth,  375. 

Spartans  and  Helots,  371. 

spectator,  302,  377,  38S. 

speculation,  281. 

speculation  in  eyes,  331. 

speculum,  289. 

speech  to  conceal  thought,  367. 

Sphinx's  Kiddle,  The,  308. 

Sphinx's  secret,  307. 

Spice-country,  334. 

Spirit  of  Love,  292. 

'  squeak  and  gibber,'  383. 

St.  Augustine,  346,  383. 

St.  Elizabeth,  300. 

St.  Martin's  Summer,  335. 

St.  Sophia,  394. 

St.  Stephen's,  312. 

Stamped  Broad-sheet,  302. 

Stanzas  fro77i  the  Grand  Char- 
treuse, 379. 

star  of  a  Lord,  293. 

steam-engine,  299. 

Stella,  Journal  to,  302. 

Sterne,  372. 

Stewart,  Dugald,  279. 

Stillschweigen  und  CoS"i^,  282. 

Stow's  Survey  of  London,  317. 

Strachey,  George,  328. 

straddling  animal,  310. 

street-advertisements,  317. 

'stroke  transmitted,'  383. 

Stimime  IJebe,  280,  320. 

Suetonius,  324,  347. 

suicide,  349. 

sulphur,  choking  by,  290,  429. 

suns,  Herschel's,  382. 

swan-song,  379. 


Swift,  XX,  xlvi,  1,  302,  329,  365, 

371,  386,  394. 
Swiss  inscription,  367. 
Sybaris,  327. 
Sybil-cave,  348. 
Sybilline,  326. 
sympathetic-ink,  317. 

'tables  dissolved,'  311. 

Tacitus,  339,  347,  390. 

Tailor  Patched,  The,  284. 

Tailor's  Melancholy,  393. 

Taine,  on  Carlyle's  style,  xlii. 

Talapoin,  292. 

Tale  of  a  Ttib,  365,  376,  394  ;  in- 
fluence of,  on  Sartor,  xx,  xxi. 

TalistJiaji,  The,  381. 

Talmud,  293. 

Taviing  of  the  Shrew,  327,  364, 
3S6,  394- 

Taoukzvang,  Life  of,  353. 

Tarakwang,  353. 

Tartar  steak,  299. 

Tartary,  Thibet  and  China,  Trav- 
els i7i,  292. 

Taste,  Nature  and  Principles  of, 
^7S,  353- 

Taste,  Standard  of,  278. 

Tattersall's,  295. 

'tears,  wipe  away,'  356. 

Tempest,  322,  384,  385. 

Templars  of  Cyprus,  351,  376. 

temple,  one  only,  374. 

temptations,  355. 

Teniers,  302. 

Tennyson,  320,  327,  334,  341,  350, 

35I'  Zl^-^  379- 
Teufelsdrockh,  the  name,  282  ; 
abandons  law,  330  ;  alone  with 
the  stars,  354;  disbelieving  all 
things,  338  ;  invited  to  tea,  331  ; 
relations  to  Reinfred  and  Car- 
lyle,  xxvi,  xxvii;  subsists  by 
translation,  331 ;    his  assessor- 


INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION      427 


ship,    331  ;    light  on,  331  ;    his 
career  typical,  Ixiv  ;  his  chronic 
sickness,  349  ;  his  despair,  350 ; 
his   conversion,  350,    360;    his 
Greek  and  Latin,  325;  highest 
hope,  341  ;   Hindoo  character, 
323  ;  ironic  tone,  333 ;  mother, 
323  ;    neck-halter,    330 ;    read- 
ing, 323  ;    reading  at  the  uni- 
versity, 328  ;  recommendations, 
289;    stern    monodrama,   330; 
study  of  law,  32S. 
Teusinke,  303. 
Themistocles,  prayer  of,  306. 
'  think  and  smoke,'  287. 
Thirdborough,  364. 
Thomson,  Aiditvin,  290. 
Thor,  370. 

Thoreau,  on  Carlyle,  xlv,  h,  n. 
Thorpe,  296. 
Thoughts  on  Man,  369. 
'through  a  glass,'  385. 
Ticknor,  318. 
Timbuctoo,  320,  334- 
Time  and  Space,  381. 
titles,  from  fighting,  379. 
Tobacco,  287. 

Tod  eines  Kindes,  Aiif  den,  384. 
Tool-using  Animal,  298. 
Tour  to  the  Hebrides,  299. 
Towgood,  328. 

triad,  Carlyle's  use  of,  Ivi,  Ivii. 
Triesnitz,  tree  at,  353. 
Trismegistus,  320. 
Tristram   Shandy,  285,  312,  313, 

319.  320,  334,  341,  351- 
'true  beginning,'  319. 
Truth,  Essay  on,  327. 
Twelfth  Night,  386. 
two-and-thirty  quarters,  323. 
Tubalcain,  351.    - 
turkeys  driven  to  market,  312. 
two-legged  animal,  291. 
T%uo  Voices,  350. 


Tyndall,  Ixi. 

Ude,  299. 

Uhland,  384. 

Ulfila,  379- 

Ulysses  quoted,  307. 

universe,  a  symbol,  367. 

University-cap,  390. 

'unspotted  from  the  world,'  387. 

Urn  Burial,  305. 

Utopia,  334- 

Value,  Theory  of,  278. 
Vanity's  Ragfair,  365. 
Vaucluse,  353. 
vested  interests,  372. 
view-hunting,  343. 

Virginians,  The,  375. 

Vision  of  Jtidgment,  341. 

Vocabulary  of  Philosophy,  335. 

Volkslieder,  Die  Deutscheii,  280. 

Voltaire,  348,  358,  364,  380. 

Voyage  of  Maeldune,  341. 

Wachler,  L.,  282. 
Wagram,  352. 
Wahngasse,  289. 
Walcot,  John,  277. 
Waldschloss,  335. 

Wallenstein's  Tod,  384. 
'  walls  tumbled  down,'  380. 

Wanderers  Sturmlied,  336. 

Wandering  Jew,  2S8. 

war,  net  purport  of,  352. 

watchcoat,  372. 

watchman,  395. 

watch-tower,  280. 

Water-babies,  The,  372. 

'  weak,  to  be  miserable,'  348. 

'  We  are  such  stuff,'  385. 

Weissagungen  des  Dakis,  380. 

Weissnichtwo,  282. 

Welsh,  Jane  BailUe,  xv  ;  as  Blu- 
mine,  xxxv  ;  Carlyle's  relations 
with,  xvi. 


42  8       INDEX    TO   NOTES  AND   INTRODUCTION. 


Werdcn  u.  IVirken  der  Literatur, 

282. 
Werner,  276. 

Wert  her,  Leiden  des  Jungen,  335. 
IVest-cist.  Divan,  275,  360. 
wheel-spokes  of  Destiny,  373. 
'  where  there  is  no  light,'  380. 
whispering-gallery,  277- 
Whitehead,  W.,  298. 
'whose  Author,'  382. 
'  whoso     can    look     on     Death,' 

342. 
'  whoso  hath  ears,'  285. 
wicker  idols,  391. 
Wilde  Jdger,  Der,  345. 
Wilhelm  Meister,   275,  290,  291, 

313,   323,   342,    353,   354,    356, 

357,   358,   360,   378,  379- 
Wilhelm  Tell,  322. 
William  the  Silent,  367. 
Windlestraw,  Duke  of,  312. 
Winnipic,  hunting  by  Lake,  378. 
Wisdom  of  Goethe,  360. 
wisdom,  little,  291. 
wishing-carpet,  344. 
witch's  hair,  356. 
Wither,  G.,  287. 
'  without  bottom,'  382. 
'without  God,'  348. 
'without  variableness,'  381. 
Wit,  Humour,  and  Satire  of  the 

Seventeenth  Centu7'y,  348. 


women  laid  their  hair,  380. 

wonder,  314. 

'  wonderful  wonder,'  386. 

wonder,  nine  days,  289. 

Wordsworth,  324,  345. 

work  in  well-doing,  355. 

world,  a  Dog-cage,  355. 

World  Well  Lost,  353. 

Worms,  Diet  of,  363. 

'  Worship  of  Sorrow,'  Ixvii,  358. 

Wotton  Reinfred,  source  of  Sar- 
tor, xxii,  xxxix ;  synopsis  of, 
xxiv,  XXV ;  quoted,  276,  285, 
319,  322,  323,  324,  325,  326, 
327,  328,  330,  332,  o^zZ^  335, 
Zl>^^  337»  -iZ^,  339,  340,  341, 
342,  343,  345,  347,  348,  349 
355,   357,  361,   368. 

'wreck  of  matter,'  310. 


Yeast,  322. 
Young,  Edward, 


^91,  z-^p- 


Zacharia,  328. 
Zahdarm,  329. 
Zauherlehrling,  329. 
Zeitkiirzende  Lust,  quoted,  304. 
Zelter,  Goethe's  Correspondence 

with,  289. 
Zeno,  358. 
Zerdusht,  387. 
Zinzendorf,  361. 


ADDENDUM. 


159  25  fiction  of  the  English  SmoUet.  "  I  remember,"  proceeded 
this  champion,  ''  when  I  was  a  slave  at  Algiers,  Murphy  Macmorris  and 
I  happened  to  have  some  difference  in  the  bagnio,  upon  which  he  bade 
me  turn  out.  '  Arrah,  for  what.?'  said  I,  'here  are  no  weapons  that  a 
gentleman  can  use,  and  you  would  not  be  such  a  negro  as  to  box  like 
an  English  carman  ! '  After  he  had  puzzled  himself  for  some  time,  he 
proposed  that  we  should  retire  into  a  corner  and  funk  one  another  with 
brimstone  till  one  of  us  should  give  out.  Accordingly  we  crammed 
half  a  dozen  of  tobacco  pipes  with  sulphur,  and,  setting  foot  to  foot, 
began  to  smoke,  and  kept  a  constant  fire,  until  Macmorris  dropped 
down."      T/ie  Adventures  of  Ferditiand,  Count  Fathom,  cap.  xli. 


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WHAT  IS   SAID  OF 


Spenser's  Britomart 


Edward  Dowden,  Professor  of  English  Literature  in  the  University 
of  Dublin,  Ireland. 
It  was  a  happy  thought  to  bring  together  the  beautiful  story  of 
Britomart,  and  to  make  many  persons  who  know  only  Una,  know 
Spenser's  warrior  heroine.  I  think  all  lovers  of  Spenser's  poetry 
will  say  you  have  done  a  good  deed.  The  notes  aid  a  reader 
without  interrupting  his  pleasure  and  the  introduction  says  well 
all  that  it  is  needful  to  say. 

George  L.  Kittredge,  Professor  of  English  in  Harvard  University. 

I  am  greatly  pleased  with  it.  The  editor's  leading  idea  was 
decidedly  a  happy  one;  and  she  has  followed  it  with  uncommon 
judgment  and  good  taste.  The  introduction  is  precisely  what  was 
needed,  and  the  notes  are  both  simple  and  sufficient.  The  book 
should  prove  very  useful  to  beginners  in  Spenser,  and  even  those 
who  are  not  beginners  will  find  it  attractive. 

J.  Russell  Hayes,  Assistant  Professor  of  Ejiglish  in  Swarthmore 
College,  Swarthmore,  Pa. 
I  am  glad  to  see  that  you  are  doing  some  good  work  for  the 
spreading  of  the  study  of  Spenser.  His  great  masterpiece  has 
been  too  long  neglected,  and  works  like  this  of  Miss  Litchfield's 
will  help  to  call  to  Spenser  some  of  the  attention  which  the  schools 
devote,  too  exclusively,  I  think,  to  his  greater  contemporary. 

Arthur  R.  Marsh,  Assistant  Professor  of  Comparative  Philology  in 
Harvard  University. 
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judicious.  I  rarely  get  hold  of  a  book  of  this  kind  that  I  can  so 
unreservedly  praise.  I  hope  its  excellence  may  lead  to  its  being 
widely  used  in  schools  and  colleges,  and  that  it  may  serve  to 
awaken  a  more  general  interest  in  one  of  the  noblest  and  most 
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aiNN    &   COMPANY,   PUBLISHERS, 

BOSTON.      NEW   YORK.      CHICAGO.      ATLANTA.      DALLAS. 


THE 

Principles  of  Argumentation 

By  GEORGE  PIERCE  BAKER, 

Assistant  rroftssor  of  English  i?i  Ha7-va?'d  College. 


i2mo.    Cloth.    x  + 414  pages. 
Introduction  price,  $1.12  ;  mailing  price,  $1.25, 


"^^O  you  want  a  practical  text-book  on  a  subject  as  difficult 
as  it  is  important  ?  You  can  have  it  in  Baker's  "  Prin- 
ciples of  Argumentation."  Argument  is  the  form  of  discourse 
most  necessary  to  study,  yet  no  Rhetoric  can  afford  space 
to  treat  it  fully. 

For  a  number  of  years  Professor  Baker's  work  at  Harvard 
with  his  classes  in  Argumentation  has  had  an  important  in- 
fluence in  shaping  the  methods  of  instruction  in  this  depart- 
ment elsewhere.  His  "  Principles  of  Argumentation  "  is  an 
embodiment  of  his  methods  and  of  the  principles  on  which 
college  work  in  this  subject  can  be  made  successful.  It  is 
no  mere  rule  of  thumb,  but  practical  in  the  full  sense  of  the 
word,  and  it  treats  the  matter  both  simply  and  interestingly. 

The  author  goes  right  to  the  heart  of  the  matter  in  recog- 
nizing that  there  is  an  argumentation  —  the  most  important 
of  all,  since  it  is  fundamental  to  all  others  —  which  exists 
independent  of  technicalities,  the  argumentation  of  every- 
day life,  the  principles  of  which  every  intelligent  man  needs 
to  know.  A  training  in  this  should  precede  a  study  of  the 
special  rules  of  procedure  :  it  is  this  training  that  the  "  Prin- 
ciples of  Argumentation "  aims  to  give.  For  this  reason, 
while  the  book  does  not  neglect  oral  discussion,  it  treats 
chiefly  of  written  argum.ents. 

It  has  throughout  abundant  material  for  illustration  and 
practice,  and  contains  appendices  and  a  very  full  and  helpful 
General  Index  as  well  as  a  special  Index  of  Authors. 


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